Cloud Nine
by NetOwl
Summary: Cloud reads internet rumors that Aeris can be revived.  Final chapter added.  New bonus material added to end, since I'm not sure anyone liked the ending.
1. Spamalot

Cloud Nine

Cloud Strife, like many men his age, had a problem with a girl. Unlike with most men his age, the problem was that the girl was dead. Sure, he and his buddies managed to save the planet, and in the process he ended up getting hitched to his childhood sweetheart, adopting an unusually talkative doglike pet, moving into a cozy little home in the mountains, and finding more than enough work as a mercenary to support his picket fence and 2.5 kids, but he never really got over Aeris.

Funny girl, Aeris. He never asked her to start liking him. He just fell into her life out of the blue, and the two bonded over some flowers, a spot of tea, and a nice morning run to get away from some assassins. For some reason, Aeris hadn't even let Cloud's occupation (ecoterrorist) bother her. She even tagged along when Cloud went off to save his kinda-sorta-maybe girlfriend Tifa from a kidnapper, and she didn't complain much when her efforts to disguise Cloud to sneak him into the kidnapper's compound blew up and ended with the two of them fighting pretty much all of the place's employees anyway.

Maybe she liked him because she couldn't separate the image of him from the memories of her first love. Maybe she liked him because he had precisely the same problem. Maybe she liked him because his spiky, gravity-defying hair had a hypnotic effect on women. Whatever the reason, the two were definitely an item almost from the start. They had even spent late nights around the campfire perusing an Ikea catalogue in hopes of finding a cheap yet serviceable set of furniture for the country home they hoped to purchase upon saving the world from yet another mad would-be god figure.

They really only had one date together, and it was confusing to both – Cloud, because he was feeling all those strange and fuzzy emotions normal boys would get on their first dates, usually closer to age 13; and Aeris, because she never quite figured out why Cloud, when acting in that theater piece halfway through the night, kissed the girl in the dragon costume instead of her. Afterwards, however, both knew they would be together until death did them part. Ah, how technically true that was!

Cloud was, at the moment, thinking of his fling with Aeris while he plugged away at his home computer, searching the website of the life insurance policy fate had fortuitously caused him to put out on Aeris before they traveled to the Temple of the Ancients. At issue was whether or not her death could be ruled an Act of God. Cloud and his lawyer were trying to make the case that it was, since Sephiroth was, at the time of the slaying, far enough along on his journey toward becoming a god that they could get away with fudging the figures a little. The insurance company's lawyers were trying to argue that the being who killed Aeris was not even the real Sephiroth, but rather a clone created by Jenova for whatever nefarious purpose, which might have been clearer had the whole story not been mangled nearly beyond all comprehension through the process of translation. Besides, Sephiroth had been dead for nearly five years, and the policy simply did not cover attacks by murderous zombies.

Cloud quietly cursed the fact that Shinra went under. He would have loved to see how Rufus could collect on his father's murder, also at the hands of a Sephiroth clone. At things stood, he was forced to go through the case histories archived on the company's website, looking for something helpful while his lawyer was sunning himself in Costa del Sol. Surely there was some precedent for someone being stabbed by an entity that may or may not have been an extension of an ancient frozen god. Surely.

"Holy mother of Pearl Magic! That's it!" Cloud's outburst at his computer was enough to cause Yuffie, his guest for the weekend while Tifa was away teaching a martial arts camp in Wutai, to turn on her back, stuff a pillow over her head, and attempt a dirty look in the general direction of the disturbance before disappointedly realizing that the pillow was in the way. She softened up a bit at the thought that a happy shout was an indication that Cloud was a step closer to becoming rich enough to buy her that lovely jewel-encrusted materia storage box she'd been eyeing for some time now.

What Cloud saw, however, had nothing to do with insurance claims. No, what he saw, while casually checking his email in another browser window, was this:

"Revive Aerith in ten easy steps! Ask us how! Only 29.95. Click for details."

Though disturbed at how spam email and obnoxious pop-up advertisements were quickly becoming indistinguishable (with the present case being an archetypical example – Cloud couldn't even tell offhand which it was), he let his impulses get the better of him and clicked on the link offered. Ten minutes later, when he managed to get all of the new pop-up windows to go away, Cloud found himself looking at a painfully familiar summary of one of the more salient features of his life: the days before Aeris had kicked the bucket.

Pink text plastered across a lint gray background spelled out the epic saga of how Cloud, coldhearted mercenary and all-around good guy, had lost his loving and faithful if somewhat airheaded companion Aerith when some trenchcoated fellow with a gigantic sword turned her into a human shish kebab. Despite the girl being inexplicably renamed Aerith, the story was too much like what had happened in Cloud's real past for him to regard it as anything other than a retelling by someone at least passingly familiar with what really happened. His life had become internet lore. He suddenly felt even more embarrassed by the bit of cross-dressing that was absolutely and necessarily essential to the thread of the narrative and wasn't at all just an excuse for Aeris and others to have a laugh at his expense.

Reading through the entire recap of his journey to save the world somehow convinced Cloud that he could trust whoever was selling revival information. After all, if whoever this was knew each and every note Cloud had missed while playing the piano in Nibelheim trying to approximate that stupid overworld theme music, then who was to say the same person couldn't have power over life and death? Heck, Cloud himself had been stabbed, gored, gouged, mutilated, burned, frozen, zapped, crushed, poisoned, bashed, trampled, and shot more times than he could count, and he always managed to feel completely better after a quick drink or a night at an inn. Could Aeris's injury have been that much worse? (And why did he not think to use phoenix down on her at the time?) Totally forgetting rational thought, Cloud began to trust the mysterious internet stranger with Aeris's life and, by extension, his own happiness. The next logical step was, of course, to trust that same stranger with his credit card number.

Cloud filled in the required fields on the request form and was greeted by some large, cheerful letters telling him that the information he had purchased would be emailed to him shortly, that he was a valued customer, and that he would find happiness and fulfillment for years to come if only he would look into making more purchases on the same website. Cloud quickly rushed to his inbox, read the piece of mail marked "re: reviving Aerith," and smiled as he sent a command to his computer's printer.

End Chapter 1


	2. Dig a Pony

Chapter 2

Cloud hacked, coughed, wheezed, and sputtered as a large puff of smoke put him in a stranglehold after his dynamite went off. He had half a mind to ask whether or not the old Bone Village miners were just playing a joke on the newcomer, hoping to scare him off and keep their corner on the market for pointless digging. The other half of his mind just wanted to punch the jerks.

When the air finally cleared, Cloud muttered a few consoling words – mostly curses – as he trudged over to where he thought everyone should dig that night. If he was somehow lucky enough to have picked a location that hadn't already been dug to death by the same digging crew that had spent the last several years cleaning out every inch of the area. Sure, for a mere couple thousand square feet, the site had a ridiculous amount of treasure hidden in it, including a magical harp that for some reason had previously allowed Cloud to pass through the nearby forest, but sooner or later, everything had to run dry.

According to the printout Cloud had brought from home, though, today would not be that day. Buried in the dirt was, at least supposedly, the first step toward getting Aeris back: the key to Sector 5 of Midgar. What it was doing buried in Bone Village, he had no clue whatsoever, but if he ever wanted to see the myopic flower girl again, Cloud had to press on. Pressing on meant suppressing the rising urge to kill everyone around him who wasn't complaining about the dirt.

Having picked his spot, Cloud cursed a bit louder, gestured to the digging team, and clamored back to the tend, where Yuffie was waiting for him. In his mind he ran through his excuses for wanting Aeris back without spoiling that he was in love with two non-ninja girls, not just Tifa. Yuffie understood that Cloud was trapped in a loveless marriage with the childhood sweetheart he only tolerated because of the bond they forged saving the world from Sephiroth (to say nothing of Tifa's efforts to help Cloud recover his sanity when he went catatonic at Mideel), and that she was his real lover. What Yuffie probably wouldn't buy would be Cloud's claim that he and Aeris didn't really care for each other. He could easily offer his past total neglect of girls he had promised to love as evidence for his not giving a rip about Aeris, but his paying through the nose for the revival instructions and then following them like some sort of born sucker had to make for some pretty spectacular counterevidence.

The lie Cloud deemed most likely to fool his mistress was that they were off chasing the components needed to summon the Ancient Elder Regal Overlord of Supermateria. To a bad speller, or to someone not clever enough to try Ancient Elder Retainer of Immaculate Supermateria, this was a pretty good approximation of the acronym Cloud was going for.

"Yuffie!" chuffed a dirty and tired hero. "I think we're done for the day. Time to relax."

"Cloud, dearie, what are we out here in the middle of nowhere for, again?"

"You remember, don't you?"

"Actually, I don't. That's kind of why I'm asking."

"A.E.R.O.S."

"Isn't she dead?"

"No, the Ancient Elder Regal Overlord of Supermateria. A.E.R.O.S. You like materia, don't you?"

"I love it."

"Then you're going to love me when we finish this quest, because I'm going to get you the biggest chunk of materia you've ever seen."

"It better be, Cloud, dear. I'm freezing my buns off, and you're filthy."

"Just come to bed already, won't you?"

"Sheesh, alright! Somebody's cranky!"

"You noticed?"  
"And filthy. I already said you were filthy. Go wash up."

One of Cloud's most visible reactions to the next morning's curveball was to kiss the printout of the instructions. Against all odds, against all likelihood, and against all logic, the digging crew actually turned up the key. Cloud began to reassess the author of the instructions. He now labeled him "snot-nosed punk most likely sending me on a wild goose chase" instead of "snot-nosed punk almost assuredly sending me on a wild goose chase." The new optimism almost made up for the reduced cathartic effect.

Yuffie's first action of the day was not a kiss. She jabbed one of her throwing stars into Cloud's hand as he shook her awake, eager to tell her the good news. She drew blood. Her first sentence of the day went something like this:

_What the_ unintelligible muttering _so early, even for you, you _more muttering _getting me up and acting like we've struck gold _muttering _good mind to hit you…_

Cloud kissed her chapped and dirty lips. At the moment, his hearing wasn't quite good enough to allow him to distinguish between _hit_ and _kiss_. His efforts got him slapped.

"You twerp!" came a suddenly wide awake response.

"But you said…"

"Never mind that. Do you think I'm in the mood for kissy-face after waking up out in the middle of nowhere, in the freezing cold, when I need my beauty sleep?"

"But…"

"No buts. You're going straight to the doghouse."

"I got the key."

"Do you have any idea how much sleep it takes to get me to look this good?"

"The key. The key we need to get to the material."

"Who shot who in the what, now?"

"Materia."

"Ah. Why didn't you say so?"

"Let's go."


	3. One is the Loneliest Number

Chapter 5

One is the Loneliest Number

Every day for the past three weeks, I've had nothing to do but sit around my cozy little home and think about life. Every time I do that, I end up constantly reminding myself of how alone I am. Alone. It's a great big world out there, and I'm sure there are at least a few companions out there with whom I could share my life. A few buddies. Maybe even true love. But it all seems like a fairy tale to me. You'd think someone graced with a name like Romeo would have better luck with girls, but no.

I moved into my new place about three weeks ago, and I've had to get used to a few of the quirks of the place. My bedroom very closely resembles a pigpen. My neighbor doesn't know how to quit squawking at obscenely late hours. I'm eating food fit for earthworms, and then only really poor, desperate earthworms. And I'm alone. I hate being alone.

I've always been alone. I used to live up in the cold, cold north. There, I had plenty of worries that regularly distracted me from my lonesome state, so I got on okay, but every once in a while my lack of companionship would hit me over the head like an overweight Moogle jumping on an unsuspecting grasshopper. I needed _someone_ to be there for me. Anyone. I needed help.

Things got a little better when I met some new friends. Sure, they weren't around much, and romance was still an impossible dream even with them around, but Cloud and Yuffie were better company than miles upon miles of snow and ice punctuated by the occasional snow wolf and a few ill-tempered rabbits. They would smile a lot, and the up-tempo conversation (Yuffie's specialty) was good for both my spirits and my optimism. The two had a sort of chemistry that made me think love was real and out there for the finding. They helped me view being _with_ someone as a possible reality, even for me. They made life better just by being there and being themselves.

They also helped me move.

I think the bad company and worse weather up north were getting me stuck in a rut. I had begun to look at life as something static. Unchanging. A little bland. I figured I'd always be alone. My new home has turned my perspective on its head, both because the surroundings are better and because they are different. That hope thing I mentioned is more than just a television show set in Chicago now.

But with hope comes disappointment. As much as I enjoyed my visitors, Cloud and Yuffie eventually stopped coming regularly, and I still haven't made friends with my neighbors. They're a boorish lot, the like of which I could never see myself tolerating for any extended period of close contact. I thought things would be better by now, but they only got worse, and the taste of heaven I encountered in my glass of hope turned out to be soured by a stodgy old ingredient called reality. I've seen other people (not just snow rabbits) happy, and I don't have that happiness for myself. I am, you might say, frustrated.

Why am I telling you all of this? Why should you care? It's all because I want you to learn a lesson about hope. No matter how glum I might have become, my longing for something better and my firm belief that I would get what I was longing for were not in vain. See, Cloud and Yuffie came back yesterday, and they brought along someone new.

Juliet. Ah, the most beautiful sound I've ever heard. Juliet. We were only formally introduced last night, but already, I think I'm in love with her. My first impression of her was that she was some sort of angel, albeit an angel dressed entirely in pink. Her voice was like that of a nightingale serenading the most peaceful sort of running stream you've ever seen. Her eyes were dark. Quite dark. You'd think I would have noticed more than that about them, given how long I spent staring at them, but I'm afraid that's all I can say at the moment. I'm still stunned whenever I think of her, which is pretty much always. Her face haunted me all last night, and it is still with me now. How much longer until I can see her again?

Yuffie assures me that Juliet at I will get on famously. We're a perfect pair. Her journey away, it turns out, was nothing more than an attempt so find someone to set me up with. Imagine that. Here I thought I was being abandoned, and my friends were only looking out for my happiness. I deserve the proverbial kick in the pants for doubting them.

Will the same spark of passion I see in Cloud and Yuffie ignite between me, Romeo, and my beloved Juliet? I have no doubt whatsoever that it will. It's just a matter of time. I just need to see her again. I must express my love to her. Everything I've ever wanted, from when I was born to when I was a bachelor in the frozen north to my solitary (but noisy) confinement in my new apartment, is within my reach. I just need to tell Juliet. Oh, how happy we will be together!

Together is one of those things that has always been the territory of others. Now it will describe me. Me and Juliet.

I must go see her. Now. She's just two doors over. Maybe I can shout my confession of love over to her.

But I don't need to. Yuffie is here now, and she seems intent on getting the two of us together at this very moment. I should remember to thank her later, both for her inspiration and for her action in filling the void in my life. With Juliet. We're now in front of her door. Yuffie is the one to open it. Juliet, my sweet, my forever, hear me! Hear what I've been waiting to say to you since before I even knew we'd meet! Listen to me pout out my heart!

"Waaaaaaark!"

xxx

Cloud crossed out item #2 on the list: "Breed a polka dotted chocobo by mating a 'Wonderful' chocobo with a pink chocobo, using a Zeio nut." On to the next problem!


	4. Big Bad Leroy Brown

Chapter 4

"Whaddaya mean you don't have any cursed rings anymore?" Yuffie was feeling less patient even than usual, and it's hard to be patient while holding a coversation with a three story tall monster whose face looks like it has gotten the worst of an encounter with a (very large) brick and whose attitude could have been lifted straight out of Don Corleone's evil twin. Ultima Weapon was in a foul mood after getting kicked around by Cloud and Yuffie, who seemed to be trying to mug him.

"Just what I said. I lost my cursed ring."

"I've never known a monster to lose his treasure before. Never."

"Well, I did."

"What, did someone else beat you up and steal it first?"

"No."

"How did you lose it, then?"

"I just did, okay?"

"This here pointy-edged throwing star says otherwise."

Yuffie simultaneously drove her poitn and her shuriken home, injuring Ultima's ego and nose (such as it was) and convincing the beast to come clean.

"I lost it in a poker game."

This was about the only reply imaginable that could have let the air out of Yuffie's momentum.

"Poker?" Cloud finally contributed to the mugging.

"Yes, poker." Ultima's pride hit a new low point.

"I can see why he lost," said Yuffie. "He's got less a poker face and more a bitter beer face."

"Shut up. And leave me alone. I'll be off now, please?"

"First," said Yuffie, "tell us who has the ring."

xxx

"Gawd, this place is gross. Urk."

Yuffie took some time getting used to the atmosphere of _Istanbul Grill and Poker Den_, one of the seedier corners of the Gold Saucer. The smoke had her hacking like a Tampa Bay Devil Rays cleanup hitter, and the music had her head pounding like Muhammad Ali taking out frustrations on a defenseless bag after a hard day at the office.

Cloud ignored his companion's suffering. "We're looking for a man by the name of Big Bad Leroy Brown. Keep an eye out."

"Urk." Good reply.

Cloud scanned the room. He instantly recognized several of the more prominent lowlifes gathered around the game tables. "Wildcard" Bill Hiccup. Phil "Hello" Kittie. Chris Moneylender. Johnny "The Grim Reaper" Chun. Reno from The Turks. And in the corner, Big Bad Leroy Brown.

Leroy was big enough to intimidate even the most macho of macho men. Doctors sometimes give patients six months to live; Leroy would give those he disliked something more like five minutes. Ever the mobster, he had more connections in the underworld than your average sewer system, and he somehow managed to smell even worse. The guy could make a man sweat just by looking at him.

Naturally, the first words out of Yuffie's mouth after seeing Leroy were: "That man really stinks. Yuck."

Cloud cupped his hand over Yuffie's mouth before more damage could be done, but he still thought he saw a hint of a deadly snarl on Leroy's lips.

"Do you have any idea how dangerous that man is?" Cloud's tone was serious enough to be used by a surgeon about to replace someone's heart, speaking to a resident who was known for dropping his keys in before sewing people up. "If he hears you make one more derogatory comment tonight, I'll probably be carrying you home."

"Oh?"  
"In two separate bags."

"Oh."

"Be careful."

"I get it."

Cloud was somewhat accustomed to sleazy joints like this one, so he sauntered up to the table and attempted to make small talk before dropping a few Gil as an ante.

"Deal me in. What's the game?"  
"Texas Hold 'Em."

Cloud took a quick glance at his cards and sighed when he saw a two and a three, different suits.

"I fold," he said.

"Just as well," said Reno. "I'm going to win this hand."

"You're about the worst bluffer I've ever seen," said Elena, whom Cloud hadn't even noticed earlier. Rude, too, was in the room, but he was too busy guzzling some sort of adult beverage at the bar and fiddling with his iPod to play any cards.

Reno ended up being right, taking a middle-sized pot and earning a look of disgust from Elena to go with some sarcastic applause from her detractors at the table. She consoled herself by assuming Reno would have to pay for the night's drinks if she went broke playing poker.

Yuffie saw Elena's apparent greenness as an opportunity to rob from a helpless amateur, so she wedged herself next to her and began some polite, distracting conversation.

"Didn't this place used to be called _Constantinople House of Cards_ a while back?"

"_Istanbul_ was _Constantinople_, but now it's _Istanbul_, not _Constantinople_," answered Elena.

"Been a long time gone, _Constantinople_? Why did it get the works?"

"Reno didn't like the décor, so he got Shinra to shut it down."

"What did he not like about it?"

"That's nobody's business but his."

"I see." By this, Yuffie meant that she understood Elena's point/threat, but she also, secretly, meant that she had stolen a peek at Elena's cards. Time to raise.

Elena swore when everyone's cards were revealed, using a phrase Yuffie had never heard before. Yuffie just giggled as she gathered an armful of chips to herself. The smell of money was more than enough to cover up everything else in the room, at least to a lovable kleptomaniac like herself. It was also a bit addicting, so she decided it was time to pull out all of the stops, i.e. time to cheat to get more money.

Cheating was one of Yuffie's favorite hobbies, right behind stealing and just ahead of lying and hunting squirrels. Naturally, she had a few decks hidden in her pockets, and it took only a short trip to the restroom to put the one with the appropriate back designs (chocobos and Moogles swordfighting) up the sleeve of her emergency gambling sweatshirt.

The shirt itself was a thing of beauty—a triumph of functionality over aesthetics. Installed _underneath_ the right arm was a tiny yet expensive piece of Warp materia, which she could use at any point to replace a card in her hand with a card on her wrist. After the hand was over, she would warp the two back to their original places so the house deck wouldn't mysteriously shift from being normal to comprising entirely aces. Yuffie had no intention of getting caught.

Avoiding detection also required using a little restraint. If she cheated every hand, someone would catch on and have her either beaten up or thrown out of the building. That wouldn't be good for their quest to obtain the cursed ring any more than it would be good for her wallet were this a regular gambling trip. The trick, she had discovered, was to watch for a while to see how often the best player at the table won and then win just slightly more often. The added benefit of this is that it frustrates the other guy.

Things were going quite smoothly when Cloud pulled Yuffie aside.

"Notice anything strange?"

"Yeah, I do. This drink tastes like vomit."

"No, have you noticed that Leroy isn't winning tonight?"

"I have, actually. I'm kicking his butt left and right."

"Isn't that a little strange? I'm certain the guy cheats like crazy, and yet you're winning easily."

"Well, uh…" Yuffie considered letting Cloud in on the secret and decided against it. "I'm just really lucky tonight."

"And he's not."

"That's what I don't quite get. I'm sure he's cheating. I can see where he's hiding his extra cards."

"How would you know about a thing like that?"

"No reason." Yuffie's eyes darted from side to side.

"Look, he's the best poker player on the planet by just about any measure, and he's getting clobbered by amateurs tonight. It's like… like…"

"Like he's cursed."

"Bingo. That silverish ring on his left hand must be our target."

"Oooooh. I see. Its curse is hurting his poker game."

"Think you can get it if I cause a little commotion?"  
"You underestimate me. I think I can win it from him at the table."

"But you're…"  
"Winning big tonight. And I feel lucky."

"Right." Cloud resigned himself to doing things Yuffie's way. "Barkeep, I'd like another Cheeseburgerita."

Yuffie was about due to find a new mark, anyway; Elena was all tapped out, and she was getting up to join Rude at the bar just as Yuffie found her way back to her seat.

"Quitting already?"

"Stuff it, bimbo."

"Grouchy, aren't you?"

Elena elected not to reply to this.

Yuffie forced herself to think about Leroy and let Elena go. Unfortunately, this shifted her focus from the Gil she was winning to the smell that was emanating from Leroy's seat. That and her drink told her it was time to make a mad dash for the restroom again.

"Urk!" She didn't make it. Casualties included a small portion of the floor and the entire front of her lucky sweatshirt.

"Darn it!" Time to go to Plan B.

xxx

"Hey, big boy." Yuffie adopted her smarmiest of expressions as she slid up next to Leroy. It was, at least, the smarmiest she could manage with plugs stuck in her nose to protect her from the odor.

"Hey, pretty lady," said Big Bad Leroy Brown. "Can I buy you a drink?"

"Sure thing, hot stuff."

Cloud was now the one who had to try to keep from hurling. He'd seen better acting in movies about giant rubbery monsters eating major cities.

"You've been pretty good tonight," Leroy crooned as he came back with a drink, of which Yuffie pretended to take a sip.

"When you're hot, you're hot."

_Find a word other than 'hot,' please_, thought Cloud as loudly as he could manage. _Darn her. She sat down on the wrong side_.

Yuffie took hold of Leroy's right hand and was about to massage it a bit when she noticed that it hadn't been washed since, well, since a time a paleontologist could probably determine by examining the layers of dirt. Yuffie's contingency plan was to drape her arm around the guy's shoulders. It turned out not to be any more sanitary.

"I'm off to get a napkin," she announced. _And some disinfectant_, she added to herself. When she got back, she thought to squeeze down to his left. She also thought to put on some sleek-looking gloves.

"Cigarette, darling?" Yuffie was laying it on pretty thick now.

"Sure." Leroy took the bait.

"Light?" Yuffie held her lighter up to Leroy's face, moving her other hand to the ready position.

What happened next seemed to Yuffie to be in slow motion and to everyone else to be a big blur. The cigar (not cigarette) Yuffie had offered Leroy exploded in his mouth, releasing a cloud of purple smoke and making a sound like a barrel of gunpowder being flattened by a falling piano, assuming the piano was on fire. Leroy's cheat cards dropped out of his sleeves like leaves falling from a tree being cut down, and arms went about as stiff as Aeris a few minutes after her Sephiroth accident. Most of the poker players jumped from the table, and the nearby Turks drew their weapons. Cloud was nowhere to be seen.

Within a few seconds, Yuffie added herself to the list of people gone AWOL, with Ultima's ring in her pocket. Leroy, not seeing the girl he'd been having so much fun flirting with, assumed some loser had tried to steal her and shoot him and something something whatever, he was drunk, and he just felt like punching someone. The smoke and alcohol prevented him from seeing his victim.

Amazingly, the getaway was completely clean, and the poker game started up again a couple of minutes after the air cleared. Cloud gave Yuffie a short congratulatory hug during which Yuffie, on a roll, picked his pocket. Leroy, without his curse, started winning at the table again until the manager noticed the extra cards he kept in his sleeves. Elena managed to get Reno to buy her a few more drinks.

Rude was too busy trying to learn the words to the macarena to notice any of the commotion.


	5. Hotel Detective

Chapter 5

Hotel Detective

"Jinkies, Red! You say the Resurrection materia was stolen by a ghost?" Truth to tell, Yuffie was not as surprised as she sounded.

"Correct," said Red XIII. "It disappeared from its display case in the hotel gift shop two nights ago."

Yuffie wasn't about to waste a trip all the way to a godforsaken hole in the wall like Cosmo Canyon, so she figured her options at the moment were limited. Limited to finding the thief, robbing it blind, then pretending to have lost the treasure, that is. As that was generally her _modus operandi_ anyway, she couldn't quite put a finger on why she was annoyed.

Perhaps it was the dreary scenery. Some itinerant interior design expert (Yuffie actually knew one) desperately needed to introduce the locals to a couple of colors other than red and black. A few more lights here and there would make finding one's footing on the steps outside the main hill a tad bit easier. A few signs clearly marking entrances and exits would save tourists some time, and they might help confused visitors actually find the materia shop. The town could also use a few strategically placed fire extinguishers for use on the lelss self-aware residents when they just plain forget to stop babbling on and on about subjects no one but their graduate thesis advisors could possibly find at all stimulating.

Another possible source of Yuffie's bad mood was the trip over. Taking that horrid boat from Costa del Sol to Junon was bad enough. Being greeted by the incessant strains of that wretched marching music when she landed made things worse. The darned fanfare never shut off. It was like that stupid "Who Wants To Be A Gil-lionaire?" show back during Shinra Network's game show fad period. It tore at her eardrums from the moment she stepped on dry land to the moment she skipped town, and she made certain the intervening interval was as absolutely brief as possible. She had, of course, spent about the first fifteen minutes outside town throwing up in the bushes, probably made nauseous by a combination of sea travel and a migraine.

Speaking of migraines, Yuffie hated Red XIII. The dumb dog had every right to be proud of his ability to speak, sure, but did it have to keep practicing all the time? It was as if he'd forget how if he ever went more than five minutes without saying anything. The only way Yuffie could _ever _shut him up was with Ruby Snacks, the doggie treats named after his species' red fur. Unbeknownst to Yuffie, courts were still trying to hammer out whether Ruby Snacks constituted a trademark violation, but Ruby Weapon v. Nabisco's resolution pending, Yuffie still had access to enough of the precious dog food to buy herself some peace and quiet now and then.

Peace and quiet were at a premium on the road from Junon to Cosmo Canyon. The old buggy Yuffie had used while saving the world from Sephiroth had since gone to the Great Garage in the Sky, so she and Cloud rode back with Red XIII in anoisy, rusty, dilapidated hunk of junk called the "Mystery Van." Yuffie guessed the eponymous mystery was whether or not the van could reach its destination without breaking down.

"Okay, Red," said Yuffie. "We're stuck helping you retrieve the materia." She thought twice. "I mean, we'd be happy to help. For the good of humanity. Rah, rah!" Yuffie thrust her right arm in the air while tossing Red XIII another Ruby Snack with her left.

"Rmmf," said Red XIII with his mouth full. "R'I'm rery grad ro rear rit."

"So," said Cloud, "we have to tarck down the thief before we can even ask if we can borrow the materia."

"Dummy!" Yuffie smacked her lover upside the head before whispering something in his ear.

"Oh! Clever girl!"

"Rhat?" can Red XIII's reaction through yet another Ruby Snack stuffed in his mouth.

"We're, uh, going to, uh, find some way to, uh, trick the thief by, uh, Yuffie, would you mind explaining your plan?"

Yuffie flashed Cloud and evil eye and improvised: "We've got a plan for catching the ghost. See, we'll wait until it's nighttime and he's asleep, then we'll steal the treasure out from under his nose."

"Rhosts sreep rat right?"

"I believe so," said Cloud. "If they didn't', they'd be tired all the time."

"Rokay."

Yuffie wanted the last world. "It's settled. We'll go ask Bugenhagen what he knows about the situation, and then we'll spend tonight searching for the thief. Better rest up. And Cloud, let's buy plenty of Ruby Snacks when we get to town.

XXX

Cosmo Canyon was drearier than either Cloud or Yuffie remembered it, but that was probably because an impolite thunderstorm had put out the friendly bonfire that normally brightened the stone step in the middle of what passed for a main drag in this town. The goon out front whose job it was to turn away visitors was enjoyin ghte bonus cantankerousness afforded him by the weather.

"You guys again?" he said. "Meh, whatever. Get indoors and don't bother me."

"You do realize I used to be a bodyguard, right?" Cloud didn't like taking orders or being quiet individually. Taken together, those two items were as good as an executive order to talk.

"What of it?"  
"You're standing out here in the rain. You're tired. You're hungry. You're being rude to the customers. Your job guarding this place isn't much different from my old job guarding Aeris," (here Yuffie coughed to remind Cloud how well that had turned out) "but you're completely unhappy with it. You know why that is?"

"Why?"

"You probably have a bad union. I'll bet you don't even—"

Ding! An alarm cut Cloud off.

"I'd love to hear more of your yammering," said the security officer, "but my shift is over now. Tah tah, losers!"

Cloud was not prepared for this, but he remained lucid enough to guess that Red XIII would have something to say, so he stuffed two Ruby Snacks into Red's doggie mouth. He then started for the item shop.

XXX

"Nanaki," said Bugenhagen, as the party arrived at the observatory atop the city, "I'm so glad to see you again, but you must pay more attention to your hygiene. You're starting to look shaggy."

"Rorry," said Red XIII.

"But no matter. Please, make yourselves at home, all of you. Have you met my new lady friend, Velma?"

"Charmed," said Cloud, kissing her hand.

"Velma, dear, this lecherous young fellow is Cloud. That hairy quadrupedal mess over there is my grandson, Nanaki, and this is, uh…"

"I'm the great ninja Yuffie."

"Randrather, r'I ridn't rnow rou rad ra rirlfriend."

"Isn't she just my type, though? Smart, sweet, gigantic glasses."

"Rou rare rute rogether."

"By the way, why is it that you can't seem to speak properly today? Do you have a cold?"

Yuffie chimed in. "We've been feeding him Ruby Snacks, and he can't stop eating them."

"Oh, is that what that large bag tied to his mouth is? What did you call them?"

Red XIII answered. "Ruby Racks."

"Say what?"

"Ruby Racks."

"Scooby stacks?"

"Ruby Racks."

"Newbie snacks?"

"Ruby Racks."

"Scuba snacks?"  
"Ruby."

"Loopy?"

"Ruby."

"Huh?"  
"Ruby!"

"I'm not quite getting it."

"Ruby! Ruby! Ruby-ruby-ruuuuuu…!"

"Ruby," said Yuffie, "like the precious stone."

"Ah," said Bugenhagen. "Of course the thief would think of that illustration."

"Call me a treasure hunter or I'll rip your lungs out!"

"Okay, okay. Don't get snippy."

"Careful," said Cloud. "When she gets worked up, she can be pretty scrappy."

"If by _scrappy_ you mean highly annoying, I see your point."

Yuffie closed her eyes and counted to ten.

XXX

"Cloud," said Yuffie, "did you notice that we didn't' actually get around to asking Bugenhagen about the ghost?"  
"Zoinks! We didn't', did we?" For all he suspects, we're just here on vacation."

"Grossness. Vacationing here?"

"Not exactly where I'd want to spend a honeymoon."

"Speaknig of which, Cloud, dearie, when are you going to dump that tramp you're shackled to?"

"Tifa? Uh, I was thinking of possibly doing that when we finish our journey for the materia."

Yuffie must not have been expecting this reply; she was stuck somewhere in the no-man's land between the feeling you get when you win the lottery and the feeling you get when you find out your wife is cheating on you, and both her joy and her shock showed very clearly on her face.

Cloud just congratulated himself on his bluff.

"And speaking of our journey," he began again, "where should we begin our search? Where would we find a ghost?"

"I don't know," said Yuffie. "Are there any haunted caves around here?"

"R'I rnow!"

"Shut up, doggie."

"Rave rof ra Ri! Re rould ro rhere."

"I said shut up."

"Wait," said Cloud. "What about the Cave of the Gi? That place was pretty haunted last time we went there."

"It was, wasn't it?"

Red XIII would have slapped a paw to his forehead had it not been for the fact that he needed two free paws to eat Ruby Snacks as efficiently as possible.

"What are we waiting for?" said Yuffie.

"Me." Velma answered the rhetorical question as she entered the room very uninvited and very unexpected. "Jilickers! You guys look like you're going to see a ghost!"

"We are," said Yuffie, "but this is how we always look. You must have been…"

"Right. I was listening at the door."

"Clever girl." Yuffie was mildly impressed. "We could use someone like you. Care to come along?"

"Certainly. I take it we're starting with the Cave of the Gi?"  
"Which you overheard."

"Yes. That, and it's blatantly obvious that we should look begin our search for a _ghost_ in the nearby _haunted cave_."

"That too, I guess."

"Well. Shall we go?"

"Indeed."

XXX

The Cave of the Gi was dreary, desolate, dim, doleful, dispiriting, dismal, drab, dank, damp, dingy, depressing, and a bunch of other 'd' words that Roget knew but Yuffie didn't. That a haunted cave could be so dispiriting was both confusing and intriguing. That ruby-coated dogs would easily diappear against the red rocky background was both inevitable and annoying.

"Red XIII, lik, where are you?" Yuffie pretended to care.

"Rover rere."

"Jinkies!" Velma disliked what she saw. "The path splits, like, in two."

Cloud instantly had an idea. "We'll split up. Velma and I will take the left fork, and Red and Yuffie will take the right. We'll meet back here in fifteen minutes to report our findings."

Yuffie felt like she'd been stung by a giant wasp, or Johnny Hooker, or something. Dumb dog.

"All right, everyone," said Cloud. "Let's mosey."

XXX

"Gawd, I hate this place." Yuffie hated most places that weren't well-lit with air conditioning, a hot tub, overstuffed chairs, floor pillows, a masseuse, a butler, a caterer, and servant boys with palm branch fans, but the Cave of the Gi rubbed her the especially wrong way, like a curious kid rubbing a cute, happy, fluffy porcupine. "See anything, Red?"

"Rot ret."  
"Ugh, what's that?" Yuffie tripped over some loose bleached rocks.

"Bones! Grossness!"

Yuffie kicked at the offensive skeletal remains as hard as she could, missed, stubbed her toe on a rock, and cursed, using the new phrase she'd heard from Elena. "Slippin' rippin', dang fang, rotten zarg barg-a-ding-dong!" she added for good measure.

"How the heck can we see in here, anyway? I didn't bring a lantern."

"R'I ron't rnow."

"And how does talking with your mouth full make every word begin with an 'r'? That's not what happens when I talk with my mouth full! I mean, it wouldn't, if I ever did, which I wouldn't, because it's so impolite, and I'm a perfect lady. And, uh, this whole adventure doesn't make a lick of sense!"

Red XII was off sniffing some new rock, so he apparently didn't hear Yuffie.

"Stop ignoring me, you mutt!"

Too late.

"Hey, get back here!"

She then saw what had so captivated Red XIII's doggie attention: a ghost.

"R'uh roh."

"Run!" said Yuffie.

"A ronster!" said Red XIII.

"Roooooooaaaaar!" said the monster.

Yuff and Red XIII turned tail and dashed for the meeting area, shouting Cloud's name.

"What is it?" Cloud and Velma rushed out of their tunnel. Cloud's forehead, cheeks, neck, and lips were covered in lipstick, and his shirt was on backwards. Velma was fumbling with her glasses.

"The ghost! We…" Yuffie stopped. "What were you guys doing?"

"We were, uh, searching that dark corner over there. For the ghost."

"We found him!"

"Where is he?"  
"Right rehind rus!" Red XIII turned pale, which on him was more like pink than white. How fur (which, as far as Yuffie knew, contained no blood vessels) could go pale was beyond her.

"Run!" Yuffie was a more traditional pale.

"Why run?" Cloud was not. "We've fought ghosts before. We've won against worse. Sephiroth was practically a god, and we wasted him. Why run from this twerp?"

"Because, uh, he's creepy?"

"So was Bob Newhart, but we didn't run from him, did we?"

"No, we didn't. I guess that was actually a pretty easy fight."

"And what did we learn then?"

"When fighting the undead, use cure spells and phoenix down."

"Cloud looked distraught. "That only works in video games. This is real life. What we learned was that if you hit something hard enough, its head will come off."

"Cloud, honey," said Yuffie, "if we cut off its head, then we'll have a headless ghost chasnig us, and headless ghosts are twice as scary."

"Then we'll put a carved pumpkin where its head used to be so it'll at least look lik it has a head. Then everyone who sees it will make fun of it. 'Look at the pumpkin head!' 'That man has a pumpkin head!' 'Mommy, can I get a pumpkin head, too?'"

Cloud looked around. "By the way, didn't' you say it was right behind you?"

"Come to think of it, we've been talking a while."

"R'oh no!"  
The ghost had taken the philosophical discussion time as an opportunity to give itself a tactical advantage by climbing a rock. It had then wasted that advantage by falling off the very rock onto which it had taken such great pains to climb.

Crash.

The separate, arguing bodies became a single mass of tangled limbs, smearing lipstick, smelly dog, and complaining ninja. It remained in that phase for about a minute. Cloud then took the initiative to pull everyone apart. He glanced at the fifth body.

"This is no ghost!" he said. "This is just some guy wearing a bed sheet over his head."

"And look what he stole for Halloween." Yuffie lifted the materia orb from his pocket.

"I got a rock," said the ghost. "I mean, I'm a ghost! Rooooaaaar!"

"Let's see who our culprit _really_ is," said Cloud. He tugged the sheet over the thief's head and cast it aside.

"Old man Bugenhagen?" Yuffie acted stunned. "You're the ghost? You stole the materia?"

"And I would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren't for you meddling kids and your stupid dog!"

Yuffie was never so happy to be done with a fetch quest.


	6. Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy From Company B

Chapter 6

Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy From Company B

Cloud needed cheering up. The next item on the list was a complete collection of 1/35 scale replica soldiers, and he just plain couldn't find the things. He felt he'd combed the world pretty thoroughly during his quest to save the world, collecting every worthless trinket he found, but in the end, he had only come away with two of the prized toy soldiers.

"Remind me again why we're looking for these dolls," said Yuffie as she looted the closet of some poor sap whose only crime was living in Junon.

"They're action figures," Cloud replied.

"They look like dolls to me."

"Well, they're not. They're perfect replicas of the famed Junon 51st Infantry, which racked up over four hundred kills during the war with Wutai and became the darlings of the locals."

"_I _heard that at least three hundred of their body count were women and children."

"They're heroes! Four hundred kills!"

"Dead civilians shouldn't count."

"They're still famous."

"That they are. And now they're famous as dolls."

"Action figures! With kung fu grip!"

"What the heck does that even mean?"

"I don't know. I just know I didn't play with dolls."

"Whatever. See anything?"

"Not yet."

"This is getting frustrating. Is there any part of the world we haven't searched for these stupid dolls?"  
"Action figures."

"Is there any part of the world we haven't searched for them?"

"I can't think of any."

"Do we look again?"

"On second thought, I _can_ think of someplace we haven't looked."

"Where?"  
"Someplace nice. They've got everything."

"Is it…?"

"Yes."

Cloud felt a chill run down his spine.

XXX

**HotSexyNinja894** logged into can't believe we're doing this," said Cloud. "I've never known a more wretched hive of scum and villainy than eBay."

"We must be cautious," Yuffie said without looking away from the monitor.

"You do know that last time I tried buying something on eBay I got scammed out of over 100,000 Gil, right?"

"Was that when you put down that bid for the sword-chucks? You know those aren't real."

"I swear they are! Serapis himself showed them to me."

"Serapis is not real."

"But…"

"Neither is Icelus, Phobetor, or Phantasos. You were sleeping off a night of boozing."

"Was not."

"Were too. You looked practically dead on the couch for almost a day. I could still see the imprint you left for a week. And Tifa almost killed you when she found out."

"She doesn't mind my boozing."

"Then why did she scribble vulgar and insulting phrases all over your face in magic marker when you were too far gone to do anything about it?"

Cloud had no answer for that.

"So, uh, do you see anything yet?"

"I'm surfing around. Something will turn up."

"Why don't you click this button?"

Cloud pointed to a red skull and crossbones in the corner of the webpage, with a caption reading, "Click here to hunt for forbidden and evil artifacts. Disclaimer: is not responsible for any evil that may occur as a result of purchasing one of these artifacts. All curses, hexes, assorted side effects, and other user unhappiness are not the responsibility of and you have been warned."

"Eh, why not?"

The computer coughed and sputtered for a bit ("I hate dialup," Yuffie thought) and finally spit out an appetizer of assorted forbidden relics. Cloud's eyes lit up.

_Item 33342983_

_Listed by: _**HeartilyCutiePie**

_Rinoa's Special Love potion_

_Guaranteed to make even the coldest potential significant other fall madly in love with you no matter how little he cared before. Use with caution._

_Current bid: G53000 – _**DonaldInAcupulco**

_Item 2349823_

_Listed by: _**VengeanceIsDyne**

_Right arm of Barret Wallace_

_Like new. Some gangrene. Makes a good wall decoration._

_Current bid: G4000 _– **TaxidermyIsMyLife3**

_Item 6912392_

_Listed by: _**ZackZombie**

_Buster Sword_

_Good condition, but seen some action. Traces of blood still on tip._

_Current bid: G600000 _– **MadSephirothCloner**

_Item 9994666_

_Listed by: _**DeepFrozen**

_Robot Devil's hands_

_Excellent for writing opera, and what better way to win over the girl that you idolize than with the hands of an automaton?_

_Current bid: G6666666 _– **DancesInThePaleMoonlight**

_Item 5297838_

_Listed by: _**RedNotCommie**

_Fine comb collection_

_Make your hair or fur coat shine with these brilliant combs. Also good for showing your enemies who's boss. Great for tough hair._

_Current bid: G8760_ – **Tlockhart**

_Item 9538588_

_Listed by: _**ArtAppreciation**

_Relm Arrowny's left ear_

_I cut it off myself, and I'm hoping a fan will appreciate a souvenir. Only one other like it in the world._

_Current bid: G150000_ – **StarryNight**

_Item 2244913_

_Listed by: _**HitchcocksGhost**

_The Art of Directing Movies by A. Hitchcock_

_Still in manuscript form. Rare._

_Current bid: G90000_ – **THX1138**

_Item 9838335_

_Listed by: _**FreeSkies**

_Cid Highwind's Guide to Proper Etiquette by Cid Highwind_

_Includes how to swear in fifteen different languages. Forward by Ozzy Osborne._

_Current bid: G400_ – **AngstyTeenPoet44632**

"No sword-chucks." Cloud pouted. "Some other good stuff, though."

Yuffie ignored him and clicked on the listing for _Rinoa's Special Love Potion_.

"What's that for? You already have me, don't you?"

"I do, but I have plans for it."

"If you're cheating on me, I'll…"

"Relax. I'm going to use it to make the Wutai material dealer fall in love with me and give me a discount."

"Discount? I thought you just stole from him."

"I did, but he caught on and had security beefed up."

"Security that even you can't beat?"

"He put an Air Supply tape on endless loop over the store PA system. I can hardly even walk in the door anymore."

"Have you considered ear plugs?"

"I – Hey, that's not a half bad idea!"

"It's wrong to manipulate people's feelings like that, too. Love potions should be used responsibly or not at all."

"Thievery is honorable."

"But is it responsible of you?"

"I assure you that whenever something in Wutai gets stolen, I'm responsible."

"Gotcha."

"And speaking of material, what about those dolls we were looking for?"

"Action figures. And try the next page."

_Item 0192018_

_Listed by: _**CStrife**

_Superstick Hair Gel_

_This stuff keeps my hair nice and spiky, even with my active lifestyle._

_Current bid: G5000_ – **CloudFanGrrl8843**

_Item 9102915_

_Listed by: _**CStrife**

_Silk dress_

_Comes with diamond tiara, sexy cologne, blonde wig, makeup, and bikini briefs. Makes you feel like a natural woman._

_Current bid: G9000_ – **BlitzBallChampTidus**

Still nothing useful, but Cloud still felt compelled to assume command of the mouse and click over to the next page before Yuffie could see some of the even more disturbing items listed by **CStrife**.

"There!" said Yuffie.

Sure enough.

_Item 5590392_

_Listed by: _**CollectorDio**

_Complete collection of 1/35 replica Junon soldiers_

_They're all here, and I'm willing to part with them for a price._

_Current bid: G100000_ – **Elena**

Yuffie called Elena a nasty name.

"She can't hear you, you know." Cloud entered a counter bid.

"Yeah, but it's still true."

"Look, could we just get this over with? Bidding ends in…" Cloud checked. "Fifteen minutes."

"Good timing."

"Are we officially sniping her?"

"Yep."

"Let's celebrate with some champagne."

"Let's." Yuffie pulled out some glasses and a bottle of rum.

"Champagne, I said."

"What's the difference?"

She was just about to pour herself a glass when the phone rang.

"Hello?" Cloud froze at the voice on the other end. "Tifa?"


	7. Did You Ever Have To Make Up Your Mind?

Chapter 7

Did You Ever Have to Make Up Your Mind?

"I didn't know it was physiologically possible, but this both sucks and blows," Cloud informed the bathroom attendant. "Fortunately, I learned how to handle delicate social situations from a little TV show called _Three's Company_."

The delicate situation in question was this: Tifa had insisted Cloud go on a date with her. This was normally not a problem, but this time it was, because Lady Luck seemed to be on vacation. Of all the times for Yuffie to insist on going on a date, she had to pick the exact time Tifa chose. Obviously, Cloud wasn't about to ruin either date by letting one of the girls know the other was there. Tifa didn't even know about Yuffie, and Yuffie was under the impression that Cloud hardly spoke to Tifa anymore. At least he had managed to book reservations at two different restaurants (both in the Gold Saucer) so his time with each girl would be spent far enough away from the other so as to avoid being caught in a compromising situation.

"Your towel, sir." The attendant didn't seem to care about anything other than his duties. That sentiment was common enough among those working on the more glamorous careers, but it was strange to find in someone whose job was standing around in a bathroom and being polite to smelly people. Some people out there sure had some strange passions.

Some passions were stranger than others. Cloud once knew a guy whose primary reason for living seemed to be counting piles of pebbles. Every day, he's gather a new pile about a foot deep, plop it down on his desk, guess how many pebbles he'd picked up, and then count them to see if his guess was right. After he finished counting, he'd throw the entire mess away, clearing space for the next day's work. Cloud wondered if the guy ever got the number exactly right, and if not, what would happen if he ever did.

There was another guy Cloud once met who was everything one would expect from a boxing enthusiast, except the guy never learned how to throw a punch. He'd go to the gym every day to work out, and each day, he'd take home another pair of boxing gloves (Cloud suspected he stole them), but he never put them on. He just hung them in his closet. It turned out he was the same way with golf and baseball. He never played any of the sports. He just collected the hand wear. He was, one could say, addicted to gloves.

Cloud used to know a half-artist. That was what he called himself, anyway. He was a painter, and a fairly good one, but he never finished his paintings. He always did portraits, and he always painted from bottom to top on his canvas, but he would stop painting when he got to the subject's chin. As it turned out, he was less a man passionate about art and more a crazy guy who was later arrested for decapitating several people, but that didn't make his paintings any less interesting. On the contrary, Cloud, among others, viewed his portraits' headlessness as a product of more than just laziness once word of the murders got out.

One of the more bizarre passions Cloud had encountered was enthusiasm for Rock Paper Scissors. For some reason, enthusiasts of that particular game (most of whom were not above inventing pretentious acronyms and other assorted jargon just so regular people would be left in the dark when confronted with terms like "RPS" and "Roshambo" -- those in the know would refer to the practice as "freaking the mundanes," which sounded cool enough to them to distract from the fact that they were devoting amazingly large chunks of time to playing Rock Paper Scissors) derived pleasure from pretending there was some element of skill involved in making funny shapes with their hands. Cloud could see how computer scientists and mathematicians interested in game theory could enjoy computer tournaments where programs would compete over a thousand iterations of the game. He could especially appreciate how nonoptimal play (i.e., not choosing at random) was the only viable strategy for winning such a tournament, since a field full of programs choosing rock, paper, or scissors at random would all finish close to tied, while programs designed to observe nonoptimal play and then tailor a nonoptimal strategy to exploiting that could far outplay their peers. Humans, or course, couldn't do any of the number crunching necessary to make the game interesting, so they had to resort to imagining that the game was something psychological.

Cloud had no need for imagined psychological issues to go along with the real psychological torture of having to date both Tifa and Yuffie on the same night. Quite fortuitously for him, one of his old soldier buddies had agreed to help him out, lessening to the stress somewhat. Raul Panucci, former SOLDIER 2nd class, was now the chef a The Grumpy Snail, the Gold Saucer's only six-star restaurant. His job for the evening was to make sure Tifa's dinner suffered from as many defects as possible. Cloud could then use the poor service as an excuse to walk back to the kitchen to complain, and he could sneak out the kitchen's back door and rush over to Pirate Jack's Seafood Emporium to check on Yuffie.

Cloud had chosen Pirate Jack's because he didn't know any other chefs; it was, then, important to take Yuffie someplace where he could be confident that things would go wrong with the food. Otherwise, he'd never get back to see Tifa, and that would be awkward.

Cloud took a deep breath as he left the restroom for the main dining area of The Grumpy Snail. He looked around for Tifa, who sat alone at a small round table. He finally spotted the reflections of the table's candles on her silky, shimmering evening gown. Cloud waved.

"What's going on with the food, anyway?" Tifa sounded less annoyed than she should; she seemed more interested in making eyes at Cloud than in anything having to do with the food.

"It'll be ready in about ten minutes. It was, uh, overcooked."

"Overcooked? Wouldn't the bugs have been dead had it been overcooked?"

"Undercooked, I mean."

"You're so cute when you say the wrong thing."

"Thanks, I guess."

"Give me a smooch, Pooky."

"I told you not to call me that in public."

"We're on a date, Cloud. A date."

"So?"

"So, we're supposed to be mushy and romantic and happy and blissful."

Cloud leaned across the table, made a valiant attempt at puckering his lips, and waited. Tifa grabbed his face, held hers next to his for much longer than was appropriate for a public setting, and left Cloud gasping for air.

"You're certainly in the mood tonight," Cloud said.  
"Of course. When was the last time we did something romantic like this?"

Cloud thought for a bit, finally deciding he ought to play along with the mushy theme of the evening. "I remember. It was four months ago. We took that trip to Icicle Inn, along with all those scented candles and the romantic movie collection. We spent the afternoons skiing, and we had an entire week of beautiful nights curled up next to the fire. Candles burning, movies playing. No one to bother us. It was really nice. I seem to remember you spent the next two months worrying that you were pregnant."

"Are you feeling okay, Cloud? I don't remember any of that."

Cloud nearly choked. _Darn it_, he thought, _that was with Yuffie!_

"Really?" Cloud didn't have to fake looking pale. "I remember it so clearly. You had your hair all done up and everything. I think maybe the food gave me Mako poisoning or something. You know how it is with my memory."

"Oh, Cloud."

"I think I'll go have a word with the chef."

Cloud left his seat before Tifa could protest.

XXX

"What took you, Cloud?" The sauce Yuffie had liberally dumped all over her appetizer shrimp, more of which ended up on her face than in her mouth, effectively shielded her impatient expression from view. Her tone of voice was not so lucky.

"Just felt a little sick after the wrong thing came out of my mouth."

"Raw octopus made you throw up again?"

"More or less."

"You're such a wimp, Cloud."

_You're the one who can't so much as think about an airship without horking all over yourself, _Cloud thought. "I know, I know."

"Now kiss me."

Cloud had no trouble obeying, but twenty seconds later, something caught his eye.

"Nice dress, Yuffie."

"Thanks."

"Looks expensive."

"It was a bargain."

"I'll bet. Where'd you get it?"

"Tif—Tiffany's. Tiffany's Closet."

"Where?"

"New store. Fabulous cocktail dresses for all occasions. I love it already."

"I like the dress."

"I aim to please."

"Looks just like one I got for Tifa a while back."

"I don't think so. Tifa's dress is azure. This one is cerulean."

Cloud considered this for a moment. "Okay. Uh, back to kissing?"

"Sure."

"But, uh, when did you see Tifa's dress?"

"When I was going through her closet."

"You didn't take anything from there, did you?"

"No. Just this, uh, no, nothing."

"When was this, anyway?"  
"I forget. I just know I've seen a pretty azure dress in Tifa's closet."

"And when did you get your dress?"

"A couple of months ago."

"Tifa's azure dress disappeared a couple of months ago. She made a big fuss over it, too."

"Azure went out of style long before that; it's just like her to wear something tacky without realizing it. Why do you think I picked out something cerulean?"

"I couldn't tell the difference."

"That's because you're a guy. Guys don't know these things."

"I guess you're right."

"Back to kissing, then?"

"Okay."

"But wait. I think I've got something in my teeth. If you'll excuse me…"

XXX

"Tifa!"

"You're back. What did the chef say?"

"He said to check back in fifteen minutes, when he's not so busy, and… wait, what color is that dress you're wearing?"

"Blue. Why? Are you going blind? Are you _poisoned_?"

"No, of course it's blue. Is it azure or cerulean?"

"What's the difference?"

"That looks a lot like the azure dress you lost a while back. I thought you lost it, anyway. Did you find it?"

"I bought a new one."

"Oh. Well, that answers that." Cloud lifted a spoonful of snails to his mouth.

"Cloud, you shouldn't eat that!"

"I paid for it, didn't I?"

"Yes, but wasn't it making you sick?"

"Oh, yeah." Cloud set the spoon back on his plate and watched as one of the snails crawled off and hid under some lettuce.

Tifa frowned. "This meal sucks. I've had better dog food."

"When?"

"It's just an expression."

"Oh."

"And I'm not really hungry anymore, anyway. Let's blow this popsicle stand."

"For where?"

"Let's go home. I'd rather have you cook something nice and romantic for me, and then we can spend the rest of the night playing kissy face."

_And Yuffie will spend the rest of the night wondering where I am. That won't do. So, how do I get out of this? I need to buy some time._ Cloud nibbled on his fork. "Let me go tell the chef."

"I'll be waiting for you, Cloud." Tifa dipped her head, leaned forward, and made a kissing gesture with your mouth. She then grinned like a lion about to devour a gazelle. Her display was enough to make even Cloud blush.

XXX

"Are you done with your dinner yet, Yuffie?"

"Almost. Why, you have something else planned for us?'

"As a matter of fact, I do."

"Ooh, what?"

_We're going somewhere closer to the hotel district,_ Cloud thought. "We're going to the movies."

"That's so sweet of you, Cloud. What are we going to see?"

"I thought I'd let you choose."

"I've been wanting to see something romantic. Something sentimental. _Samurai Ghosthunters III_, maybe?"

"This evening belongs entirely to you, my sweet."

XXX

Square World Theater was busy. Extremely busy. Moviegoers packed nearly every square yard of the building, with about half of them standing in line for tickets, half of them waiting on someone else standing in line, and all of them making one heck of a racket. It was one of those crowds that seemed almost designed for losing people.

It only seemed that way, of course. Too many people in those days held on to archaic notions of design whenever some complicated system could work to some purpose. Those people would confuse _function_ with _purpose_. Had those people merely studied complicated systems a bit more, they might have noticed that complicated functions could indeed arise from simple rules.

The simplest example of this phenomenon would have to be cellular automata. If one takes an n x m grid and assigns a function to each square of the grid, one can achieve a sort of order after many iterations of the function on each square. The function for a square takes as an argument the states of the adjacent squares, and it returns a new state for the current square. For example, suppose each square could be either black or white. Then the function for a particular square could set the square's state to black of at least five of the neighboring nine squares are white and to white if at least five of the neighboring squares are black. When the functions of all of the squares are taken at the same time, the whole picture evolves in a hypnotizing Markovian dance of pure mathematics.

Mathematician Stephen Wolfram used computers to model one dimensional sets of cellular automata, plotting them against time as a second dimension. He found that certain functions would produce very pretty and very orderly designs after a certain number of iterations. Wolfram went so far as to postulate that perhaps everything in the universe could be explained as the result of some simple function acting on particles as if they were cellular automata. The hypothesis was, of course, impossible to test, but it certainly demonstrated that any religious appeals to order do not imply any design.

Biology, too, suggests mechanisms for apparent order from nothing even when a cursory glance suggests design. Protein folding works like this. A polypeptide strand's final tertiary structure depends on its sequence of amino acids, but it has to go through a folding path to get to its final shape. With each step, the protein moves to whatever next step is most favorable (assuming, of course, that the environment makes folding itself favorable), and the chain of favorable changes forms a folding path. The process is probabilistic; it fails some times, and the mistakes are discarded. In the end, you get something as complicated as the three dimensional structure of a protein using nothing other than a few basic kinetic principles.

Proteins themselves turn the way they are over many generations because those that work get selected for through natural selection. In this way, the protein folding process is a microcosm of evolution itself. At any stage of the way, the environment directs the next incremental change, and the end result is something fit for the environment. A good analogy for the process is a puddle of water. The water's shape appears to be made just to fit that puddle, but really, the water adapted (and not through any Intelligent Design process) to fit the puddle.

The same went for the crowd at the movie theater. The crowd density was a result of there being popular movies playing, and the crowd location was a result of the location of the ticket line, the need of the customers to get tickets, and the location of the concession stand and video arcade. The crowd did not need a leader to tell them where to stand to make them a good place for Cloud to lose Yuffie. That was merely result of unplanned, undirected processes. Those who would see design in the relevant function of the crowd were the same people who would think they could find hidden messages in their Alpha-Bits cereal.

Cloud cared little about the teleology of the situation. "How about if you wait in line for the tickets, and I'll go get some popcorn?"

"Don't get lost out there, sweetie."

"I'll try not to."

XXX

"You mean we're not going home yet?" Tifa crossed her arms. "I really wanted a romantic evening."

"I wanted to surprise you with this, but I guess I'll let you know now. I got us reservations at a nice hotel."

"The Ghost Hotel?"

"That's the one."

"I like it. You can hold me tight to keep me safe from the ghosts."

"It'll be like that date we had way back in the day, when we were hunting Sephiroth. Remember, we acted in that stage play, and almost kissed while watching the fireworks? That was wonderful, wasn't it?"

"No, I don't remember that."

_Darn it. Was that with Yuffie, too? Or was it Aeris? Barrett? Ick, why would I even think that?_

"I think I'm still woozy from the food poisoning."

"I'll hold your hand and make you feel better, then." Tifa attempted a seductive smile.

"Thanks, Tifa."

"And maybe I'll run out to get us some dinner while you prepare the room."

"I had backup dinner plans, believe it or not," said Cloud with an amazingly straight face. "I'll bring some food back to you. Just wait until we get to the hotel, then make yourself comfortable."

Cloud could almost breathe a sigh of relief. Three was a crowd, not company.

XXX

_Ninja Frogman Martians_ was just Yuffie's kind of show. Every major character shed at least a pint of blood per hour of screen time, the villain had a hilarious evil cackle he used every time he ended a sentence, the music was an incessant _presto_ with heavy percussion backing, and the characters mouths continued to move every time one of them finished saying a line. She was in heaven.

_Where is Cloud, though? I could have sworn I told him to meet me here. Here at… D'oh! I didn't tell him which movie! _


	8. Spaceship Races Part 1

"Everyone wants on that Trek Wars gravy train, huh?" Yuffie swung her legs up onto the couch and clicked the remote. "Everywhere I turn, Trek Wars knock-offs, Trek Wars promotions, Trek Wars teasers. Look at that, Cloud."

Cloud turned to the television. Onscreen, a kid in an orange jumpsuit and a mean-looking guy in black armor were dueling with laser swords. The armor guy seemed to have the upper hand, but the kid was taunting him.

"I admit it. You are better than I am, Darth."

"Then why are you smiling, young apprentice?"

"Because I know something you do not know."

"And what is that?"

"I am not left-handed!"

The kid tossed his laser sword in the air, caught it in his good hand, and pressed with his attack. The man in black stumbled backward.

"Impressive. Most impressive."

"You'll find I'm full of surprises."

"But there is something I ought to tell you."

This made the kid pause. "Tell me."

"Luke, I am your father!"

"Noooooo!" The kid threw his head back in a fit of horrible acting. The man in black used the pause in the action as an excuse to lop of the kid's right hand.

"You're left-handed now, dummy!"

"Father or not, you're a jerk!"

Yuffie hit the channel button before another line of dialog could be spoken. The new channel had a blond kid lying in a hospital bed and a guy in black armor sitting beside him. The show was obviously a bad soap opera, but Yuffie decided it was probably better than the farce on the other channel.

"Luke, I must tell you one thing before your brain tumor causes amnesia."

"What is it, Darth?"

"Luke, I'm not your real father."

Yuffie switched off the television.

"Diversions aside, Yuffie, I have our new assignment lined up."

XXX

"Cid Highwind?" Yuffie pouted. "We've dealt with smelly miners, disgusting birds, sleazy gamblers, the Turks, Bugenhagen and his tramp of a girlfriend, eBay, and even Ultima Weapon, and I was okay with that. But Cid Highwind? Gag me with a spoon."

"Do you know anyone else who can get us into space?" Cloud almost wanted Yuffie to come up with an alternative.

"I could steal us our own rocket ship."

"But who's going to fly it? Traveling through space ain't like dusting crops."  
"I can't do that, either."

"Without precise calculations, we'd fly right through a star or bounce too close to a supernova, and that would end our adventure real quick, wouldn't it?"

"I see your point. We need an expert, and the only expert we know is Cid Highwind. I still hate him, though."

"Maybe he's grown up a little since last time we saw him."

"Maybe, but maybe he's still the same guy who camped out in front of a theater for three weeks to get a ticket to the new Trek Wars movie."

"That reminds me. Did he ever get the Christmas present I sent him?"

"What was it?"  
"A stick of deodorant."

"Judging by how he smelled last time I saw him, no."

"Maybe he's cleaned up a little."

"I don't know. I've got a bad feeling about this."

XXX

A grizzled old buccaneer of a man let Cloud and Yuffie into his house in Rocket Town, grinning like a fool and motioning for his girlfriend/maid to bring everyone some tea.

"How ya doin', you old pirate?" Cid Highwind attempted to hug Cloud. Cloud pulled away.

"He doesn't like you," Yuffie told Cid.

"Sorry," said Cid.

"I don't like you, either," said Yuffie.

"Look," said Cloud, "we want passage to Ceti Alpha Five, and you're the only one who can get us there."

"Why should I care?" Cid took a puff from his cigarette.

"For the sake of the Rebellion," said Yuffie.

"What Rebellion?"  
"Against Shinra."

"Aren't they long gone?"

"It'll be like old times. You'll get to go into space, and I'll get my materia, and everyone will be happy. You'll be rewarded, of course."

"How much?"

"More reward than you can imagine."

"I don't know. I can imagine quite a lot." Cid turned up his eyes and tapped his foot.

"Help us, Cid Highwind," said Yuffie. "You're our only hope."

"Ten thousand, all in advance."

"Ten thousand?" Yuffie frowned. "We can almost buy our own ship for that!"

"But who's going to fly it, kid?"

"Point. Sounds fair to me."

"Okay, looks like you guys got yourselves a ship. Let me go find my hairy copilot, and we'll be on our way."

"Hairy copilot? You don't mean…"

Yuffie sneezed as an orangeish, reddish doglike creature eased into the room. "Red XIII? I knew it. I recognized his foul stench the minute I came indoors."

Red XIII growled unintelligibly.

"He recently had a bunch of dental work done," said Cid. "Ate too many Ruby Snacks, and now he can't say a word. Had to get all his teeth replaced."

"You mean he can't talk?" Yuffie's spirits rose.

XXX

"He's still a pain," said Yuffie to Cloud, after the two moved into a private room to discuss the deal. "Both of them are."

"We'll just have to deal with them," said Cloud. "We don't really have a choice if we want to get that ultimate materia."

"I guess not," said Yuffie. "Hey!"

Red XIII, who had apparently been eavesdropping, fell through the unlatched door. Yuffie scowled and kicked him.

"Would somebody please get this walking carpet out of our room?"

Red XIII growled a complaint and scurried away, his pride and the side of his face injured.

"Why don't we settle down and have a pleasant night, dear?" Cloud put his hands on Yuffie's shoulders and began to rub.

"It won't make our traveling companions any less annoying."

"No, but it might help us forget about them. Come on, I'll teach you a new card game."

"Okay," Yuffie sighed. "But this better be fun."

"Oh, it is," said Cloud as he fished through his suitcase for a deck of standard playing cards. "It's called 'Yo, Da Fours.'"

"Funny name."

"Barret made it up."

"Ah, I see."

"Anyway, we deal hands to each other, and then we try to get as many combinations of cards that add up to four as possible. Aces are one and eleven, and faces are all ten. Reds are negative, blacks are positive."

"How many cards to a hand?"

"Five, but then we can trade with the draw pile. We take turns trading with the pile or offering to trade with each other, and we draw up to five cards at the end of each turn."

"What then?"

"Then, we can use the fours we have to trade for points."

"Sounds cool. Whoever has the most points wins?"

"Yep. Here, I'll deal."

"Who goes first?"

"Ladies first."

"Okay, I'd like to trade this card in here."

"All right. That all?"

"Yep, I'm done."

"My turn. I'll offer you this card for anything negative."

"No deal."

"Okay, then I'll stand pat."

"My turn again?"  
"No, you forgot the intermediate phase."

"Which is…?"

"Use the fours, Yuffie."

"Ah, I have a black seven and a red three, so I'll take a point for those. I also have two black twos."

"I happen to have a hand of two black fours, a red four, and a black eight, so we're tied. You think you can still win? Want to keep going?"

"I'll try."

"No, Yuffie. Do, or do not. There is no try."

"But you know how much I hate card games that don't involve me robbing people blind."

"That… is why you fail."

XXX

Cid Highwind stood at the head of the dining room table. In front of him lay six garment bags.

"These, crew, are our new uniforms. I had them pressed for the occasion, as I have not been in space for years now."

"I like it," said Yuffie, looking at the one with her name sewn into the breast pocket. "What is this, velour?"  
"Indeed," said Cid. "You can tell a man by his devotion to velour. Isn't that right, Shera?"

"Yes, Cid," said Shera, sighing.

"That's Captain Cid, until this mission is over."

"Yes, Captain."

"Better. Now, crew, you'll notice if you look out the window that my starship, the U.S.S. Jazzercise, has around its hull an overly large, incredibly gaudy pink ribbon. Do you know what that pink ribbon stands for?"

"For excitement?" said Yuffie. "For discovery? For going boldly where no one has gone before?"

"No, Yuffie," said Cid, "it stands for breast cancer awareness. My mother passed away three years ago tomorrow, a victim of that horrible disease, and I want you all to be aware of it in case someday, somehow, you feel like donating a small amount of money to a charity. Until then, I will continue to hound you at every point until you feel guilty."

"Point taken, Captain," said Yuffie. _But do you have to be so glib? There's edgy, and then there's way out of line._

"But enough serious talk. The pink ribbon also stands for the start of our journey. In particular, my cutting it with a pair of oversized novelty scissors represents the start of our voyage into the unknown wilderness of a planet that was settled only fifty years ago. Shera, my scissors."

Shera looked puzzled. "Your scissors, Captain?"

"You heard me, Lieutenant. My scissors."

"I don't have them, Captain."

"Am I hearing that you do not, in fact, have the scissors I told you to bring to this meeting?"

"Correct, Captain."

"That can mean only one thing: someone stole them! And that person is planning on using them to assassinate me. But our would-be assassin has forgotten one crucial piece of information: rock smashes scissors. But paper covers rock, and scissors cut paper. Shera, we have a conundrum. Search them for paper. And bring me a rock."

Shera sighed.

"Will my sword work just as well?" said Cloud.

"Actually, it would, but will Shera be able to lift it?"

"I can lift it easily," said Cloud. "And look at me. Judge me by my size, do you?"

"When it comes to things like upper body strength, then yes, judge you by your size I do."

"I'll cut the ribbon, then."

"The ribbon cutting process can only be accomplished by someone as alluringly seductive as a woman. Otherwise, there's no reason for me to stare during the ceremony."

"Yuffie can do it."

"Fine, fine. Yuffie can do it. But just this once."

"Yuffie, you up to it?"

"Sure thing, Cloud dear," said Yuffie, "but first I'd like some time alone in Captain Cid's room to look at his collections of past ribbon cutting ceremonies. I want to make sure I do it right."

"Sure thing, sweetheart," said Cid.

"And would you mind telling me where you keep your spare materia? I'd like to study that, too."

"In the top drawer of my desk, on the left."

"Thanks."

XXX

"All right, crew," said Captain Cid Highwind. "We have our ceremony out of the way, we have our uniforms on the table, and we have our launch in t-minus thirty minutes. Any questions?"

"Will this voyage be dangerous?" said Shera.

"You betcha, it will be dangerous," said Cid. "In fact, one or more of us may fail to come back alive. That's why I've gathered the best crew in the known galaxy to man the U.S.S. Jazzercize. Our team will consist of myself, Lieutenant Shera, copilot and first mate Red XIII, ex-SOLDIER Cloud Strife, tactical weapons and stealth expert Yuffie Kisaragi, and Ensign Ricky. Everyone, into your uniforms. Ricky, you get the red one."

"Ah, phooey," said Ricky. "I've got a bad feeling about this."

"Don't we all, Ensign?" said Captain Cid. "Don't we all?"

Ensign Ricky gazed at the floor. "I'd like to call my family before we go. I have a funny feeling like I'm not going to see them again."

"You can call them after the mission and tell them about the rewards of space travel, especially for-profit space travel."

"What good a reward if you're not around to spend it?"

"No worries, Ensign. Worries are for chumps. Now, everyone, to the ship!"

XXX

The U.S.S. Jazzercise zipped through the sky like a mosquito on speed. Stars became streaks of light as the ship sailed past, and actual streaks of light became really long streaks of light comically exaggerated by the Bernoulli effect. Asteroids because like bugs for the ship's windshield wipers to casually flip aside to the ditches at the sides of the hyperspace superhighway. Possibly. The U.S.S. Jazzercise ran on technology so top secret that only Shera knew whether or not it was traveling at excessive warp speeds or taking shortcuts through hyperspace. Maybe both. Maybe it moved from one corner of the universe to the other using an Infinite Improbability Drive. Maybe it used the power of the numbers on restaurant bills. Maybe it was powered by a really, really big rubber band.

It hugged corners at 55. 55 times the speed of light, that is. It did loops. It did corkscrews. The U.S.S. Jazzercise was to space travel what the tea cups were to Disneyland. Fortunately for Yuffie, in space, no one can hear your motion sickness.

However it did its moving, the ship got to Ceti Alpha Five in time to be met by a small armada of hostile warships.

"Main screen turn on!" shouted Cid to his crew. "Someone set up us the bomb!"

"Ha ha ha," came a voice from the ship's radio. "All your base are belong to us. You have no chance to survive make your time."

"What did he just say?" said Yuffie.

"I – I don't know," said Cid. "It sounded vaguely threatening and ominous, but also comical. It's almost as if something was lost in translation."

"Let's just blow them up," said Yuffie. She pressed a big red button on the weapon control panel. The beams that shot out of the ship's guns were not quite pure destruction. They were more like 95 destruction, 2.5 devastation, and 2.5 cheesy special effect glittering, but they were a lot cheaper than pure destruction rays, and they were nearly as effective. In this case, they did their job adequately, vaporizing three of the hostile vessels. "Boring conversation anyway," Yuffie commented.

"Don't get cocky," said Captain Cid. "There are still two of them left."

"Roger, captain," said Yuffie.

"Don't call me Roger."

"Captain Cid!" said Shera. "We've been hit! Shields are down to 99.95!"

"Don't panic, Lieutenant. We've been hit worse than that before, and we'll be hit worse than that again. In fact, if my senses are not lying to me, we can expect to be hit much harder as soon as those torpedoes impact our hull."

"Incoming torpedoes, Captain!" Ricky looked frantic.

"Yes, Ensign, I just said that."

The impact caused the bridge to rumble like the apartment directly below Louis Anderson's aerobics lessons. Red XIII began to howl.

"Red," shouted Captain Cid, "damage report!"

Red XIII growled.

"Someone who can talk, damage report!"

Shera piped up, "Two engines are functioning at half capacity, and our reactor core is heating up. We have to finish this fight quickly."

"Lieutenant, did you install any gimmicky and amazingly powerful weaponry before we left, in case we ran into something like these aliens who might attack us for no apparent reason?"

"We still have the Death Sun Ray. That might work."

"It might. It just might."

"Captain, for crying out loud, fire!"

"Yuffie, that's your job. Fire!"

"Yes, Captain," said Yuffie. A few seconds later, a burst of electric death bore down upon the pathetic defenses of the enemy fleet. It struck the lead ship and caused it to explode more or less like a supernova, only without the annoying collapsing into a black hole afterwards. The debris from the explosion hit the tailing enemy vessel and punctured its hull.

"Gee," said Yuffie, "what were the chances that I could see so many space explosions on television without flak from those explosions causing any damage to anything even once?"

"Just one more reason why Trek Wars is stupid," said Cloud. "You know in the third movie, when they blow up that space station the size of a small moon directly over that forest? Man, if that had really happened, everything down on the surface would have been dead meat. Good riddance to the stupid teddy bears, though."

"Hey, I liked the teddy bears."

"It was supposed to be a serious movie, though. Of all the ways for the most powerful empire in the history of the galaxy to fall, it had to be crushed by the frenzy of a bunch of ill-tempered teddy bears. How stupid! Even _The Crying Game_ had an ending less lame than that."

"I don't remember how that one ended, actually."

"Really? The chick turned out to be a guy."

"Really? I would think I would have remembered that."

"Yep. And Soylent Green is people."

"Eww. I remember hearing about that. Second grossest movie moment ever."

"What was the grossest?"

"The second Trek Wars movie. Remember that scene where the hero and the princess kissed, and later it turned out they were brother and sister?"

"That was pretty gross, I guess. You know, with all the changes the series creator made when he did all those versions of the films, you'd think he would have edited that bit out."

"Hello?" Cid looked annoyed. "Will Ebert and Roper please remember we're fighting a battle here?"

"All right already," said Yuffie. "Geez. It's like there's no one else around here who can press the big red button. Okay, here I am, demonstrating my valuable and irreplaceable skills. Only I, the great ninja Yuffie, could possibly have the intestinal fortitude to…"

"Push the button!" Cid dug in his pocket for a cigarette.

"Quick!" screamed Ensign Ricky. "Somebody has to stop the nuclear wessels!"

"I didn't know Ricky was a Russian name," said Yuffie.

XXX

"Crew," said Captain Cid, "we are marooned on a hostile planet. Only our wits, our ingenuity, and our megatasers stand between us and certain death. That said, who wants to go hunting with me?"

"Hunting?" Shera frowned. "We have enough food on the ship to last for months, and we're not even marooned. We made a safe landing."

"Lieutenant Shera, you're messing up my rhythm. Please."

"Yes, Captain."

"Now, as I was saying, we need to form a hunting party. This planet is infested with the most foul of the most foul creatures ever to roam the universe. Is any of you familiar with what I am saying?"

"I'd understand if you would stop trying to talk like William Shatner," said Yuffie.

"I'll explain it to you, then," said Cid. "Long ago, I, Captain Cid Highwind, led a Shinra task forced assigned to stopping some of the worst space criminals ever to roam the galaxy. Who are those criminals, you ask? Conmen. Conmen of every shape, size, age, and religion, and from all three genders. And after years of dedicated hunting, I believe we got them all. If ever there were a con, you can bet I marooned him here on Ceti Alpha Five."

"So we have to watch our wallets?" said Yuffie.

"Correct. Your wallets, your jewelry, your 401k plans, and your being able to say you've never possessed a fake real estate license are all in danger every moment we stand upon this evil and forgotten soil."

"What if I want to rob them first?"

"Well, then that would be okay. Just be careful."

"Can do, Captain."

"But before we start anything, I think we should mosey over to the casino on top of that hill over there. Maybe someone there can point us in the direction of, uh, Cloud, what was it we came here for again?"

"Outerspacium, the rarest element in the known universe."

"Thank you, Cloud. Outerspacium. Most casino owners use it for toilet paper, but we need some for whatever purpose Cloud had in mind when he hired me for this voyage. Let's move out, crew!"

XXX

Fifteen minutes later, at what at first looked like a reputable blackjack table, Cid Highwind threw up his hands in defeat.

"Coooooooooooooonned! Cooooooooooooonned!"

The dealer snickered. "Youse shouda thought about that before youse played blackjack at a table run by Jimmy da Snake. Now scram, loser."

XXX

"Crew," said Cid, "we've had some setbacks. We've suffered some losses. But we will not let that phase us. In our quest for the outerspacium, we will never give up! Never surrender! Never let a cloudy day get us down. We must look death squarely in the eye and then poke him, with our index and middle fingers, to make him blink. We must be ever vigilant. Danger haunts us yet, but we… shall… prevail!"

"Shut up, Captain," said a voice from Cloud and Yuffie's tent. "We're trying to get some sleep here. What time is it, anyway?"

"It's, uh, 0300 hours."

"Go to sleep!"

XXX

"I can talk again!" said Red XIII at breakfast the next morning.

"Those," said Yuffie, "are the four words I feared most on this trip. Urk."

"Captain Cid," said Red XIII, ignoring Yuffie, "it is logical that you must spend this day hunting down the outerspacium. We should move out immediately after breakfast."

"Hmm," said Cid. "You may be onto something. We'll begin our hunt to the south, in what the locals tell me is called the Village of the Sirens. The scantily-clad, female sirens, that is."

"Just what are you hunting for, anyway?" said Yuffie.

"Outerspacium, of course," said Cid. "What else is there to hunt?"

"Why start the hunt in a village populated by nearly naked women named after mythological characters who tried to seduce sailors?"  
"I, uh, heard there was a Starbucks there, and I really need my morning cup of joe to get going."

"There should be one in Materia Town, to the north."

"I'm sure there is, Yuffie, but we're going south. After all, isn't that what man has dreamed of ever since he first looked up at the stars? To make it with a hot alien babe?"

"Your lack of ethics disturbs me, Captain," said Yuffie. "I'm going to go rob Materia Town."

To Be Continued


	9. Bite My Shiny Metal Glass Menagerie

Chapter 9

Bite My Shiny Metal Glass Menagerie

This story is a memory play. You can take what I have to say about what happened as literal truth, but that would be missing the point. I'm telling you things as they are in my mind. These thoughts live there. They may have changed or grown with time. I may have forgotten some things. I may remember some things that never happened. Still, the events I am about to relate left such an impression on me that I feel obligated to pass on what I have, even if I can't vouch for its accuracy. There is some form of reality in there. Incomplete and muted by a veil of fiction though it may be, it is there.

Strangely enough, this story isn't about me. You might even get through the whole thing without remembering that my name is Tom. Tom Wingfield. Pleased to me you, by the way. But enough about me. The most important person I'm about to introduce to you is my sister Laura. Ah, Laura. Such a singular figure. She was probably the most introverted siren you could ever meet. She might even have been the only siren alive who could be fairly described as introverted. Sometimes I couldn't even think of her as a siren.

How many sirens spend hours at a time listening to classical strains on a victrola while tending to the jonquils? You probably think of sirens as women who spend most of their time trying to woo men. I think they all live in a sort of fantasyland in their own way, but Laura's was different from most. Most of the sirens of the village lived in a perpetual haze of amorous fuzziness. Laura dreamed of that, but she lived as if trapped inside the world of her hobbies.

I can still see her now, sitting alone, music charming her as she stares at her collection of animal sculptures. Her plants, her music, and her animals took the place of the unwary male travelers swayed by the deadly charms of the village's other women. It's not that she didn't want a gentleman caller; its' that she never thought to get out of the house to find one. To her, men were like a new book sitting on the shelf. Often, you'll leave the book in its place, knowing it'll be there in the future yet not wanting to commit to it just yet. Years later, you'll find yourself without having read so much as the title page. Laura was like that. She didn't know the first thing about how to treat a man. She probably didn't even know that, as a siren, she was supposed to be the one luring the man to her.

She might have gone on like that for the rest of her life had it not been for Cloud and Cid.

One evening, our family sat down to eat dinner, like we always did. Our mother kept telling Laura and me that we had to chew our food better. It had been a full two weeks since Laura's choking incident, but that hadn't been long enough to escape a by then routine warning to be sure every bite was mushed into sufficiently small pieces so as to prevent another scrape with death. To our mother, even eating was something unsafe, something unnatural, something outside of comfortable domestic imaginary life.

I didn't like being told how to eat; I had my pride as a grown man, even if it was tempered by my living with my mother. In order to preserve some of my dignity, I went out for a walk and a smoke. I don't know what happened at the dinner table after that, but I suppose Laura and our mother got into another argument. That always happens when I leave them alone, Laura once told me.

While walking, I met the two people who would change my sister's life forever. Both were odd-looking men, but they were odd in different ways. One looked like he had a worse smoking problem than my great aunt Gertrude, and the other had hair that probably could have pierce my hand had I foolishly decided try to slap him on the head. Both looked very, very preoccupied. At the least, they looked distracted by the women roaming the streets. I guessed right away that neither had ever visited the Village of the Sirens before; the spiky-haired one looked like his eyes were about to pop out of their sockets.

It was about then when the fateful idea formed in my head. Out-of-towners were rare enough in those days, and there I had cornered two who did not even seem to know what a siren was. Laura had been so alone for so long, and she didn't know how to help herself, but I decided then that I could. Something reminded me of an old conversation I had had with Laura, back when we were children. We had been leafing through her school yearbook, and she had pointed out a boy she said she liked. When asked what was so special about him, she had said it was his hair.

She liked boys with special hair, and there I saw the most special hair that ever dodged a barber's razor. This man's hair might not have even had to dodge, in fact. I'd wager it could have taken a slash or two without giving way. It looked sturdy as steel and as defiant of gravity as a hummingbird. The other man's hair wasn't bad, either. Laura would have her choice of two gentleman callers. Or, I thought slyly to myself, she might not bother to choose one or the other.

"Sir," I called to neither in particular, but I received no answer. I couldn't help but think that had I myself been a siren, I would have been able to command their full attention with a wave of my hand.

"Sir," I called again, this time jumping between them and the girl in whose direction they were staring. "Please, a moment of your time."

"Hmm," said the one with the smaller hair. "This one looks decidedly less feminine than the others."

"That's because I'm not female," I answered him.

"Not female? But this is the Village of the Sirens, is it not?" He looked more incredulous than sarcastic.

"Indeed, it is," I said.

"Then who are you?"

"I am the brother of a shy but tantalizing siren who would love to meet the two of you, if you would care to follow me back to my home."

"Tantalizing?"

"Tantalizing."

"You'll excuse me for asking, but I'm afraid when dealing with women, I have a lot I'd like to learn."

"I'm sure my sister can teach you every thing you need to know."

"If it's a lesson in love, watch out. I suffer from a very sexy learning disability. What do I call it, Cloud?"

The spiky-haired one sighed. "Sexlexia."

"My sister is patient," I said. "Please, give me your names. I'd love to introduce you."

"I'm Cid Highwind," said the short-haired one, "and this is Cloud Strife. Pleased to meet you, though I'm sure I'll be even more pleased when I meet this vixen you've promised."

"Certainly," I said. "Her name, by the way, is Laura Wingfield, and mine is Tom."

"Cid," said Cloud, "do we have time for this?"

"Come to your senses, boy!" Cid slapped Cloud across the cheek. "We always have time for diversions, if the diversions are diverting enough. And this way, we might get our Outerspacium and a hot alien babe. Lead on, Tom!"

"Right this way. But first, let me make a phone call."

I dialed home on my cell to warn Laura to wear her best clothes because I had found her not one but two dates. The tone of her reply carried in it some form of shock, but she agreed to do what I told her. She had to grow up sometime, after all.

When the three of us reached my house, my sister greeted us at the door dressed in a thin fabric dress whose surface area was small enough to attract prolonged stares from her two guests. I smiled and waved as I introduced her to Cloud and Cid, who fell over each other trying to be the first to kiss her hand. They eventually compromised and each kissed a one of her hands.

"Thank you so much," she told me after the strangers made their way inside. "I really don't know what to say, though somehow, I've been waiting for a day like this. I, well, I'll tell you in a minute."

Laura then raced up the stairs to her room, returning a minute later with a finely knitted scarf in tow.

"I wanted to give you this when you finally brought someone home for me. I hope you like it."

"I do, I said. Did you make it yourself?"  
"Of course not. I got it at a magic show."

"You actually left the house to see one?"

"Just once. It was a little frightening."

"Please don't be frightened now. Cloud and Cid are good men, and they seem to like you already."

As if to punctuate my words emphatically, the lovesick pair drooled shamelessly on the floor when my sister turned to glance at them.

"Cloud," Cid said to his comrade, "this is where I teach you how to properly conquer a woman. It's a lot like some of my old military campaigns, like when I assaulted the planet Zergatron liberate a supply of spices hoarded by the evil alien race that once ruled that world. Ah, the Brainballs. Mysterious, crafty creatures. They had a lot of brains, and a lot of chutzpah."

"If she's a siren, doesn't that means she's going to kill us after she woos us?"

"You don't understand women very well, do you, Cloud? Step aside and learn from the master."

Cid then fixed his eyes on Laura's, leaned forward, grasped her hands in his, and planted a gigantic kiss on her lips. Laura flinched.

"That felt… good," she said at length.

"Everything feels good when Cid Highwind is in control, baby," said Cid. "See, Cloud, when you hit the bulls-eye, the dominoes fall like a house of cards. Checkmate."

"I'm glad to see you taking a liking to my sister," I said. "Both of us are getting tired of working for her – our mother." I pointed to a painting of my mother on the wall. Cid looked impressed.

"That's your m-m-mother? Here's to the poor schmoes working for the Man, even if he is a hot, sexy female man. Cloud, here's another lesson in love. The quickest way to a woman's bed is through her parents. Sleep with them, and you're in."

"Cid, you're going to get yourself killed. Now come look what I've found."

I couldn't help noticing that Cloud seemed to have his lust for my sister under control, so I urged her to flirt a little harder. She nudged up beside him as he was inspecting her collection of animal sculptures.

"What is this?" he asked her.

"Oh, this? It's my collection."

"I guessed that. What animal is this? It looks like a horse."

"It's a unicorn."

"I like it." Cloud slipped his arm around Laura. I noticed Cid giving him a rude stare.

"I'm saving it for the first man I fall in love with."

"Are you in love with me?" Cloud asked.

"I don't know yet. Am I? How do I know?"

"Let's find out," said Cloud. He took Laura's hand, pulled her head close to his, and started kissing her.

And kissing her. And kissing her. I thought they were never going to stop. I feared I had misjudged the strangers; they were clearly not the inexperienced bumpkins I had hoped. They might have been too much for my poor sister, siren or not. Or so I thought for a minute, but then things sorted themselves out. As Laura became more and more engulfed in her kiss with Cloud, her skin began to turn from the soft moonlight tint to something more resembling a sinister pool of blood. Her eyes flashed green, and two horns sprouted from her head. At last, I knew, she had reached her full potential as a siren, and the poor visitors would fetch us a fine bounty in the flea market when Laura had finished killing and stuffing them.

And then, too late, I realized my mistake. There were two of them, and she only had one of them in her embrace. And my mother was not home at the time. That left Laura outnumbered, and against all odds, Cid was not unarmed. As soon as he saw the object of his infatuation transmogrify into her demonic true form, he snapped back to reality, pulled a pike from a sheath on his back (which I hadn't even seen up to that point), and beat my sister into submission. I, being a male of my species, had no special means of fighting back, so I merely watched, a painful expression etched onto my face, as our victims got away.

"Give me your wallet and your booze before we leave," said Cloud.

And they were mugging me. I shrugged and told them to take whatever they wanted. I lost 5,000 quatloos that day.

"You and I are of a kind, Tom," said Cloud. "In a different reality, I could have called you friend."

"Put a sock in it," I said as Cloud scooped up Laura's unicorn statue and ran for the fire escape. I have no idea why they didn't just use the front door, but I'm sure there's some symbolism in there somewhere.

I spent the rest of that afternoon in bittersweet reflection. My sister had finally come us age, yes, but her personal growth had come at a price, and she didn't even get to finish her prey off properly. My disappointed was only somewhat assuaged when our mother came home later that evening carrying a dead body clad in a red space uniform with a nametag labeled "Ricky" over the breast pocket.

XXX

"Well, Yuffie, did you find any of the Outerspacium?" Cloud looked pleased with himself.

"I didn't."

"Well, I did. This unicorn statue is made entirely of just that."

"Really? How did you get it?"

"I… stole it."

"What were you telling me about ethics?"

"Let's get the heck out of here."


	10. Hey, You, Get Off Of My Cloud!

Chapter 10

Wolkedammerung: Hey, You, Get Off Of My Cloud

Nothing cures the blues like the sound of a child's laughter. Happy children normally portend luck and happiness and warm feelings of family and safety. This day, a particular basement in Kalm played host to a whole swarm of children, smiling, babbling, guffawing, dancing, and merrymaking like it was 1999. A few even went so far as to engage in all out cavorting and frolicking. All wore brightly colored conical hats. Truly, youth is wasted on the young.

Festive music droned on in the background, hardly noticeable below child-manufactured sounds. Splotches of chocolate cake with vanilla frosting and dabs of gooey, sugar-coated fruit on top lay around the floor in places that would be unexpected were the party populated by people over the age of thirteen. One boy found some on the seat of his pants after failing to find it on the seat of his chair before sitting down. Another boy found some thrown just past his head and onto a wall that at one point in its existence had been a plain white color.

Three boys clustered around a computer in a corner of the room. One two of them stared intently at the monitor, while the third, who was larger than the other two, kept watch for flying debris, by which he meant birthday cake.

"You got those screen grabs yet?" said the second boy.

"Getting them," said the first, furiously working the computer's mouse.

"'Cause I was thinking we should do something with the new Kingdom Hearts game," said the second.

"Like what?" the first said, interested.

"Make it look like there's a _Tron_ level or something. Or maybe throw in some _Final Fantasy VI_."

"Hey, good idea," said the first. "We can use those old promo shots with Locke and Terra in 3-D, and we can paste them into the background from Traverse Town or something."

"I love Photoshop," said the second. "All those gullible rubes out there. Think we can charge people for these?"

"I don't see why not," said the first. "That's what our site is for."

"Incoming!" yelled the third boy. He just barely managed to stick his hand up above his head in time to intercept a sugary chocolate projectile.

"Man, I love this," said the second boy. "How much have we made so far?"

"I think around 5000 Gil," said the first boy. "5000 Gil and counting, and, wait, that's just this year, this page. Our last page made…"

"Yeah," interrupted the second boy, "over a hundred thousand, before we got shut down."

"And I don't feel the least bit guilty," said the first boy. "If someone wants to buy fake video game information, I say they're dumb enough to deserve what they get."

"I used to feel guilty," said the second, "but I stop whenever I count how many Pokemon cards my cut has got me."

"You're a good man," said the first. "Good man."

There followed about three minutes of silence as the first boy booted up Photoshop and began preparing his latest false internet rumor. Finally, though, he spoke.

"You spent your whole share on Pokemon cards?"

"I couldn't help it," said the second boy. "What else is there to buy, anyway?"

"Pokemon cards?" said the first. "You could at least buy something that will last, like Magic cards. Mine are still worth something, and eBay tells me your Pokemon cards aren't."

"Bite me," said the second boy. "You're just mad 'cause I can whip your sorry butt at any game."

"I'll make you eat those words as soon as we're done here," said the first boy. "Halo tournament, it is, then!"

"Halo tournament!" shouted the second and third boys in unison, and in a well practiced gesture, they reached for a pair of paper cups on the desktop, knocked them together as if in a toast, and drained their contents.

"Man, you guys are going down," said the second boy. "I mean, seriously. You better bring it today, or you gonna get it from my rocket launchers."

"You're nothing but a rocket lame-o," said the first boy. "Take away your rockets, and you're a loser. A big, fat loser."

"Yo mamma," said the second boy. "You can't even write a good rumor, much less take down me and my 'leet skills."

"'Leet?" said the first boy. "You still say that?"

"Doesn't everybody?" said the second. "You're still living in the past."

"The past that's made me rich," said the first boy. "The past that's kept my gaming skills up to par, while yours have deteriorated. I heard you even had crush on a girl."

"Who told you that?" demanded the second boy.

"It's all over school," said the first. "You're losing your focus. Next thing you know, you'll be sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G, and then you'll be too busy taking care of your dozen babies to play any Halo."

"Not true," said the second. "I'm never going to lose my edge. Gamer for life."

"Whatever, loser," said the first. "Anyway, I've got the first picture done. What do you think?"

"Me like," said the second boy.

"Convincing," said the third.

"Good," said the first. "I'll upload it now."

A minute later, he logged into his website and began creating a new page. "Kingdom Hearts NEW RUMORS!" he called it. Shortly thereafter, his doctored image found its home in cyberspace. It shone on the screen like some cruel temptress, just barely blurry enough in thumbnail form to convince unwary travelers to plop down 9.95 Gil for the right to see more. Curiously, it sat directly next to a banner for another page on the same site, which read:

"Revive Aerith in ten easy steps! Ask us how! Only 29.95. Click for details."

Before the boys finished admiring their latest handiwork, a blob of cake landed on top of the monitor. All three let out shrieks of rage. Abandoning their computer for a suddenly more interesting project, they dashed off to find the culprit.

XXX

Yuffie Kisaragi bent forward, hands at her knees, exhausted.

"How many is that?" she asked for the 250th time.

"That's 256, I think," said Cloud. "We're done."

"Really? Oh, thank god!" Yuffie collapsed on the ground against a refreshingly cool rock. "So I can finally take this off?"

"Take what?" said Cloud. "Oh, yeah, that cursed ring. Yeah, I think you can. We've fought enough battles. It should be a Paladin Ring now."

"It doesn't look any different," said Yuffie.

"I guess it doesn't," said Cloud, "but I'm sure it transformed. Its magical effect must be different now."

"I'm not taking any chances," said Yuffie. "I'm putting it in my pocket, and there it's going to stay."

"Fair enough," said Cloud. "Now, for the list."

"Ooh," said Yuffie. She stood up and crowded behind Cloud in order to read over his shoulder. "What's next?"

Cloud pulled a scrap of paper from his pocket, unfolded it, and blinked. "Nothing," he said.

"Nothing? You mean we're done?"

"Looks that way," said Cloud.

"We finally get the A.E.R.O.S. Whew, I'm almost too tired to care," said Yuffie.

"Since when did you care about her?" said Cloud.

"Her?" said Yuffie. "Oh, you mean… No, I'm not talking about Aeris. What does she have to do with anything?"

Cloud stood completely still, wisely not answering.

"A.E.R.O.S, remember?" said Yuffie. "We're talking about live supermateria, not a dead girl. Geez, all that fighting must have made you stupid. And since when did you not know that I care about materia?"

"Oh, right," said Cloud. "Yeah, I misheard you."

"So where is it?" said Yuffie. "Is it supposed to appear out of nowhere now that we have all these items?"

"No," said Cloud. "We have to go get it."

"Drat," said Yuffie. "So where to next?"

"We're going to church."

XXX

"Still gloomy, ain't it?" said Yuffie as she looked over the decaying, mostly unused church. Most of Midgar was that way, but the church seemed even more so without anyone to tend to the garden inside. Everyone said the place died the day Aeris left and some dunderhead stepped on all the flowers inside, killing them. Not long after that, even the shaft of golden light illuminating the small, formerly happy garden patch in the middle of the sanctuary disappeared. The Midgar Restoration Project was the cause, of course. Someone in the upper city had patched up some section of the path from the inside of the church to the sky above, oblivious to the effect on the slums but perfectly conscious that some walkway in the upper half of the city had suddenly become a bit shadier and less leaky during rainstorms. Whatever the reason for the change, though, the most immediate effect, at least on residents of the slums, was that the church became less a symbol of hope and light and more a symbol of the past.

Fortunately, with the defeat of Shinra and Sephiroth, people had more to look for in the future and less to cling to in the past, but a few still lamented losing what had once been one of their few comforts. Even the rumors of Aeris's ghost haunting the garden died out. Some said she stopped coming as soon as the lights went out, and others claimed she faded away to a voice and then to nothing, gone forever when the last flower in the garden turned brown and disintegrated. Hardly anyone came by at all anymore, so few people so much as noticed the sign nailed to the outside of the church's front door.

Condemned building – Do not enter

Trespassers will be prosecuted by order

Of Mayor Domino II

"Very gloomy," said Cloud.

"Let's get this over with so you can dump the tramp," said Yuffie.  
"You're pretty happy to hear that, aren't you?" said Cloud.

"I've been waiting for years for you to break it off with that ungrateful, savage, ugly beast."

"I can assure you, Yuffie," said Cloud, "that Tifa and I will cease to be a couple soon after we finish this ceremony."

"About time, too," said Yuffie, scowling slightly at the mention of Tifa's name but then clutching Cloud's arm and purring like a contented kitten. "I love you, Cloud."

"What?" said Cloud, who had not been listening. "Oh, it's about 11:50."

"Huh?" said Yuffie.

"You asked what time it was, right?" said Cloud. "Only ten minutes before we can start the ritual. We'd best get everything set up."

"Right, then," said Yuffie. "Lally ho, as they say."

"Who says that?"

"Never mind. Just help me unpack this stuff."

Yuffie pulled her backpack off her shoulders, set it on the floor, and emptied it.

"The key from the mining site. Check. A baby polka dotted chocobo. Check. Cursed ring, worn for 256 consecutive battles. Check. Resurrection materia. Check. 1/35 scale soldier dolls. Check."

"Action figures," said Cloud. "And it's a Paladin Ring now."

"And the Outerspacium. Check, check, and double check.," said Yuffie. "That's it. What now?"

"We arrange them around the altar," said Cloud. "Like this."

Cloud handed Yuffie a scrap of paper.  
"'For a good time, call 555-HOTT,'" Yuffie read. "What?"

Cloud blushed. "Wrong paper. Sorry. This one."

"Ah, better," said Yuffie. "Wasn't that other one…"

"Never mind that one," said Cloud.  
"That was your number, wasn't it?" demanded Yuffie.

"I didn't write that," Cloud lied. "Tifa did."

"Really?" Yuffie gave Cloud the biggest, cutest puppy dog face she could muster. "She's such a mean old hag. You're glad to be rid of her, aren't you?"

"Quite," said Cloud. "Now, do you understand the diagram?"

"I think I do," said Yuffie. "I just need to put everything in order, and then you stand at the altar. Meanwhile, the beautiful maiden, _moi_, must wait below with the Resurrection materia. At the stroke of midnight, I activate the materia, and you chant these funny sounding words. Then the A.E.R.O.S. appears on the altar. Ooh, I bet I'll kiss it when it appear."

"Not if I beat you to it," said Cloud. "In any case, we don't have much time to lose."

During the setup, Cloud couldn't help but glance at his watch every half minute or so. He could hardly believe that everything was falling into place.

"Sure glad we're in Midgar," said Yuffie. "Anywhere else, and I'd half expect a thunderstorm outside, and this is creepy enough as it is."

"Uh huh," said Cloud. "Sure. We've only got a minute now."

"I can't wait," said Yuffie. She found herself shivering from anticipation.

"Thirty seconds," said Cloud. "You got the materia?"

"Got it here, attached to the Conformer," said Yuffie, holding up her most prized shuriken.

"Great," said Cloud. "Twenty seconds."

Silence.  
"Ten seconds. Nine seconds. Better start reading. _Corpus delicto! Deputy dog! Azarath, Metrion, Zinthos! Mors de super!_"

Nothing happened.

XXX

Hundreds of miles away, Tifa Lockheart-Strife chugged a glass of champagne. That was one of two things she felt like doing. She had done quite a bit of it, too. The bottle sitting on the table in front of her stood only half full (or to her, at the present, half empty), and the one on the floor beside the table was in two empty pieces. Tifa envied the bottle on the table; she felt entirely empty.

The second thing she felt like doing was to turn a note scribbled on a crumpled sheet of notebook paper over in her hand, repetitively and without any real end. Turning it over kept her from reading it, and as long as she didn't read it again, she found herself able to repress the urge to smash another piece of furniture. At times like these, she felt that her intense training with Zangan was both a blessing and a liability. Without it, she might not have been able to control her temper at all, but with it, her temper became more violent. Perhaps she should have finished the training instead of leaving just after learning how to kill things with nothing more than her sheer determination and a pair of spiked gauntlets.

The thought of spiked gauntlets actually sparked a memory of a third item on Tifa's to-do list: she wanted to find Cloud, ask him how he was doing, and then smash his face in, right in front of that giggling, no-account tramp flower girl.

XXX

"What up?" said Yuffie. "Is it a delayed reac—"

Before she could finish her sentence, the whole church began to shake. A deafening rumbling worked its way up from the depths of the earth below them, and parts of the floor began to shift over to one side. The noise steadily increased in volume.

Yuffie shouted something, and as best Cloud could make out from watching her mouth, Cloud decided she was either cursing loudly or practicing ordering filet mignon in French. He watched as she lost her footing, tumbled onto the floor, and crawled away as quickly as she could. It was a good thing she did, too; shortly after she got to the wall, a hole opened up where she had been standing when she used the materia. Out of the hole shot countless brilliant rays of green light.

_Lifestream?_ Cloud thought.

At once, the noise subsided. Cloud noted that Yuffie was, indeed, cursing, not ordering food, but he found his attention diverted by the spectacle in the middle of the room. A soft, melodious chiming, like that of some metal percussion instrument, had replaced the rumbling. The music sounded vaguely familiar.

Then, where Yuffie had been standing, beams of Lifestream began to gather and solidify. At least, that's how they appeared. First, they became a shapeless mass of light, and then they began to take form. Humanoid form. Cloud's eyes widened, and his mouth gaped open.

"That's not… That's not A.E.R.O.S.!" said Yuffie, but Cloud almost didn't hear her.

"Aeris?" said Cloud.

The humanoid form turned from a bright green to a pitch black shadow of a figure, and it floated up to the altar. Cloud quickly climbed on top and threw his arms around it.

"Cloud?" said Yuffie. "What's going on?"

But Cloud ignored her completely. As soon as he found himself able to, he took the dark figure's head in his hands and pressed his lips up against where he guessed the figure's lips ought to be.

"Cloud!" Yuffie's face flushed. "Cloud, you…!"

Cloud continued to embrace the new arrival. "I've missed you, oh, I've missed you," he said.

"Cloud, what are you doing?" said Yuffie. "It didn't work."

"Yes it did," Cloud mumbled.

"That's not A.E.R.O.S. at all," said Yuffie.

Cloud continued his kiss.

"And who the heck is that?" Yuffie demanded. "Cloud, what's up with you?"

"That's Aeris," Cloud said while coming up for air. "You know."

"Doesn't look like materia to me," said Yuffie.

"No, it's…" Cloud began, but Yuffie stalked up the altar and cut him off.

"I don't even recognize this… person," said Yuffie.

And with that, the moment of dawning realization struck Cloud like Thor's hammer.

"That's not materia at all," said Cloud, backpedaling as best he could. It took all of his wit to try to find a way to keep Yuffie from getting any angrier than he figured she already had. Without thinking, he shoved the figure in front of him off the altar and then pulled Yuffie next to him.

"Uh…" said Cloud. "Yuffie, quick, kiss me."

She obliged, but only for a second.

"Oh, good," said Cloud. "You were much better. And who in tarnation is that?"

The two peered down at whoever was on the floor. It was a man. Moreover, it was a man wearing a green and blue military uniform, obviously foreign from the look of it, a yellow mohawk of hair, and a very, very surprised look on his face. The man attempted to speak.

"What a way of greeting you have in this world," he said. "Allow me to show you how my people say hello for the first time."

The man stood up, dusted some gravel off of his clothes, climbed the altar, and extended his hand.

"You have done well to revive me. I am General Leo," he said as Cloud returned the handshake. "Perhaps you've heard of me."

Cloud and Yuffie groaned in unison. Leo looked puzzled

"What, did I do something wrong?"


	11. Bonus Materials 1

Cloud Nine DVD Release Bonus Features

Alternate Ending I

"Lifestream…" Cloud squinted at the gathering brightness. It began to take shape.

"Cloud, what is going on?" said Yuffie. "This isn't the materia at all."

"No, it would appear not," said Cloud.

The light went from a bright, shapeless jumble to a more concrete spheroid, and from there it elongated and began to look more and more humanoid.

"That's…" Cloud began, but he trailed off. He couldn't help but stare as the light's shape morphed into something more and more feminine. The rumbling sound subsided, replaced by what might have been some strings running up and down an arpeggio.

Then, the figure in front of Cloud turned color. The lime faded to dark green and then to black as the form hardened into what was most definitely a woman. She drifted up to the altar where Cloud stood, while Yuffie looked on in shock.

"Cloud, I thought you said this was supposed to be A.E.R.O.S.," she pleaded.

"It is," said Cloud as he took the woman in his arms and planted the world's wettest kiss on her lips.

"That doesn't look like any materia to me," said Yuffie.

"Shut up," said Cloud when he finally had to come up for air.

"But you're kissing someone," pouted Yuffie. "That's just not right."

"This girl just came back to life," said Cloud. "This is all I can do to welcome her back."

"I didn't realize you were into dating coworkers," said Yuffie.

"What?" Cloud pulled back for a glance at the face with which he had been getting up close and personal. "You're…"

"Hi, Cloud," the woman said. "Glad you remember me."

"Jesse?" Cloud cocked his head to one side. "Eh, close enough."

"Close enough? What do – hmmff!" Jesse's sentence ended as Cloud kissed her again, just as soundly as before.

"Geez, louise!" said Yuffie. "Someone get me a barf bag."

XXX

Alternate Ending II

"Lifestream…" said Cloud. "It is."

"Cloud, what's going on? Where is my materia?"

"Patience, Yuffie," said Cloud. "This is all very unexpected."

"True," said Yuffie. "I kinda thought you were a doofus right from the start for thinking this would work."

"Well, behold!" Cloud reached out his arms to the gathering light like a conductor managing his orchestra through a fortissimo passage. "We have Lifestream. That's something."

"It's not materia," said Yuffie. "Though I have to admit it's cooler than it could have been. I thought…"

Bang! Just as the rumbling stopped, someone kicked down the front door of the church. In stepped three people wearing suits and ties and carrying guns.

"I'm telling you, it's forbidden to enter here," said Reno. "If you get us in trouble again, we're just going to have to start leaving you behind."

"Do shut up," said Elena. "Look, we found them. It's Cloud and that ninja brat. Permission to fire at will?"

"No," said Reno. "No need to be hasty. Let's see what's going on with that Lifestream disturbance first."

"Oh, phooey," said Elena.

"Pretty colors," said Rude, whose i-Pod prevented him from hearing any of the conversation.

"Oh, gawd," said Yuffie. "It's the Turks."

"Yeah, I figured that out already," said Cloud. "What are they doing here, though?"

"We've come for revenge," said Elena. "You two, stand to one side and let us see what's going on here. We can't have any funny business, can we?"

Cloud threw his hands up nonchalantly. "It's a little too late for that, isn't it?"

"No matter," said Elena. "You're coming with us."

"How do you guys even still have jobs?" said Yuffie. "I meant to ask you that back at the Gold Saucer, but I forgot."

"Never mind that," said Elena. "Don't think too hard, or I'll shoot you here and now."

"Sorry I asked," said Yuffie.

"Look," said Rude, pointing to the figure forming in the middle of the room. "Am I going crazy here, or is that…"  
Elena turned. Her heart skipped a beat.

"Tseng!" She dropped her gun and ran as quickly as she could over to the altar. "Tseng, oh Tseng! You're alive. I thought I'd lost you forever."

Tseng coughed. "Huh? Sephiroth?"

"No, silly," said Elena. "It's me, that cute new recruit."

"You know, the one who's had the hots for your for years now," added Reno.

Elena stuck her tongue out. "Leave me and Tseng alone. We have catching up to do."

With that, she jumped into Tseng's arms and threw her own arms around his neck. "Wanna start now?"

But as she leaned her head in to kiss Tseng's cheek, he dropped her. With a thud, Elena hit the floor.

"Tseng, darling? What was that for?"

"I just came back to life, and all you can think about is playing kissy face? Where is Sephiroth?"

"He's been dead for some time," said Cloud.

"You, shut up," said Elena. "Tseng, dearie, Sephiroth has been dead for some time. We're just mopping up these fellows, and then the two of us can go on a well deserved vacation. Think about it. Just me and you, on a tropical beach. I'll wear my special bikini, and I can serve you pina colada's from cute little glasses with umbrellas in them, and then we can snuggle up on a beach towel and watch the stars come out. Won't it be precious?"

"Urk," said Yuffie, who by this point was leaning over the edge of the hole in the floor.

XXX

Alternate Ending III

"Lifestream…" said Cloud. "It's working!"

"Working?" said Yuffie. "I don't see any materia anywhere. If no materia appears, then Cloud, you got some 'splainin' to do."

The rumbling noise had already nearly faded, and in its place, Cloud and Yuffie could hear some light, melodic chiming. The prettier the music got, the more solid the strands of Lifestream became. Within a couple of minutes, it solidified into something vaguely humanoid.

"Cloud, you weren't here to get A.E.R.O.S.," said Yuffie. "You were here to revive Aeris! Look!"

Cloud smiled devilishly as the outline of his favorite flower girl formed over the chasm and floated toward the altar. He then frowned when he saw something else. Something else, and it look like him.

"Cloud?" said Yuffie. "There are two of you."

"There can't be," said Cloud. "I'm not dead."

"Seriously," said Yuffie. "But don't be too bummed. You've still got me, remember?"

"Yeah, uh, wait," said Cloud. "That's not me. And what do you mean by that?"

"Look, the other you is kissing Aeris!"

This sight horrified Cloud. "That's… Zack!"

"Correct," said Zack. "How have you been? I see you escaped Shinra okay. Me, I hooked up with an old flame here in the afterlife."

"You two… were lovers?"

"Are lovers," said Aeris. "Aren't we, Zacky-poo?"

"Zacky-poo?" said Yuffie. "Cloud, if I ever catch you calling me anything like that, I will slit your throat in the night and throw your body to the jackals."

"Sheesh," said Cloud, "I wasn't planning on it."

"Well," said Aeris, "now that Zacky-poo and I are back from the dead, and you guys seem to be doing the same as always, why don't we catch a bit to eat?"

"Ooh, let's go to Burger Heaven!" said Yuffie. "I've got a craving for their Mega-Deluxe Materiaburger."

"Please," said Aeris and Zack in unison, "don't say _heaven_."


End file.
